JACOBS, Justice:
In 2010, BLGH Holdings LLC, the plaintiff-below ("BLGH"), entered into an agreement with enXco LFG Holding, LLC, the defendant-below ("enXco"), to sell BLGH's renewable energy business—Beacon Landfill Gas Holdings, LLC ("Beacon")—to enXco. The Unit Purchase Agreement that governed the sale of Beacon (the "UPA") called for a purchase price of $12 million, plus a "bonus payment" to BLGH if certain conditions were met. The sale of Beacon took place and BLGH was paid $12 million. A dispute arose, however, over whether BLGH was also entitled to the additional bonus payment. enXco claimed that no bonus payment was legally due. BLGH responded by filing a Superior Court action against enXco for breach of contract. Holding that no bonus payment was owed to BLGH under the UPA, the Superior Court granted summary judgment to enXco. BLGH appealed from that adverse ruling and
BLGH is currently a "shell" holding company based in Arlington, Virginia with no full-time employees, office space, or assets other than certain monies claimed to be owed to it by enXco. The appellee, enXco, is an energy company based in San Diego, California. BLGH and enXco are both LLCs organized under Delaware law.
The parties began negotiating enXco's purchase of Beacon in early 2010. At that time, Beacon was operating under a contractual arrangement to sell its entire biomethane gas production to Conectiv Energy Supply, Inc. ("Conectiv"). Although the Conectiv agreement was set to expire in 2015, by 2010 BLGH viewed that contract as financially unfavorable to Beacon. Accordingly, and as a "condition precedent" to its purchasing Beacon, enXco insisted that BLGH cause Beacon to enter into a letter of intent with Shell Energy North America, L.P. ("Shell"), whereby Shell would replace Conectiv as the purchaser of Beacon's gas production. Beacon and Shell entered into that letter of intent (the "Shell letter of intent") on June 14, 2010. The UPA, which documented the terms of BLGH's sale of Beacon to enXco, was executed the following day.
As earlier noted, the UPA called for enXco to pay BLGH $12 million for Beacon, plus a "bonus payment" that would be owed if certain conditions were met.
Unquestionably the first condition was satisfied. What is disputed is whether the second condition was fulfilled. Regarding that question, all parties agree that a "transaction" (between enXco and Shell) was "consummated" before December 15, 2010. The only issue is whether that transaction was "[as] outlined in Section 6.1(f) [of the UPA]." That issue requires us to construe the UPA.
What complicates any analysis of that issue is that Section 6.1(f) of the UPA does not "outline" any transaction. That Section merely refers to a "letter of intent attached hereto [i.e., to the UPA] as Exhibit E,"
On June 16, 2010, BLGH entered into an agreement with Conectiv, entitling Beacon to terminate its contract with Conectiv for a one-time payment of $4.75 million. enXco's purchase of Beacon from BLGH closed the following day. Later, the deadline for executing the Shell transaction was extended beyond July 31, 2010, to afford more time for Shell and enXco to reach their separate agreement. That latter agreement was reached and finalized on August 9, 2010, and called for Shell to replace Conectiv as the exclusive purchaser of Beacon's renewable biomethane gas production. Thereafter, Beacon's "offtake" contract with Conectiv was terminated, and Conectiv was paid a $4.75 million termination fee.
After Shell and enXco entered into their final agreement, BLGH formally demanded that enXco pay the $1.25 million bonus payment that BLGH claimed was due.
In support of its position, enXco relied upon three differences between the terms of the final enXco-Shell agreement and the terms indicated in the Shell letter of intent. Specifically, the final agreement with Shell was for a term of 10 years, not 15. Moreover, the fixed purchase price for the Beacon gas production started at $8.91/MMBtu, not $9.00/ MMBtu, and did not include guaranteed price increases. And lastly, enXco agreed to a fixed 8,000 MMBtu/day "capacity" purchase commitment and "inflexible monthly delivery requirement," in lieu of obtaining "substantial flexibility in setting the Minimum Daily Volumes," as described in the Shell letter of intent.
On October 13, 2010, BLGH filed this contract action, seeking damages of at least $1.25 million. On August 18, 2011, after a hearing on cross motions for summary judgment, the Superior Court held, in a bench ruling, that BLGH was not entitled to any bonus payment. The court stated that "there had to have been some room for negotiation and modification" of the indicative terms, but ruled that "the final transaction . . . falls sufficiently short of the indicative terms . . . [such that] it's not reasonable to believe that the final deal justified or triggered the bonus clause in the UPA 1.7." The court further held that although "enXco, in the end, thought that the deal was good enough to go through with . . . there is still room, as a matter of law, under this contract to say that BLGH
This appeal followed.
BLGH claims that the Superior Court erred by imposing a requirement— nowhere contained in the UPA—that for BLGH to be entitled to a bonus payment under Section 1.7 of the UPA, the terms of any final transaction between enXco and Shell must be "substantially along the lines" of, or "materially similar to," the terms indicated in the Shell letter of intent.
Expressed in its broadest form, the dispute concerns whether the final enXco-Shell agreement entitled BLGH to the bonus payment called for by the UPA. The critical requirement, which is set forth in Section 1.7 of the UPA, is that the ultimate contract between Shell and enXco must be "the transaction outlined in Section 6.1(f)" of the UPA. Thus, the initial question becomes: precisely what transaction is "outlined" in Section 6.1(f)?
enXco's position—which prevailed in the Superior Court—is that the final enXco-Shell agreement was not "the transaction outlined," as Section 1.7 required, because the ultimate transaction terms differed materially from those indicated in the Shell letter of intent. In response, BLGH contends that although changes were made to the indicative terms, those changes, whether material or not, are without legal import; that is, they do not relieve enXco of its contractual obligation to pay the bonus. The reason, BLGH urges, is that the Shell letter of intent, by its own express language, contemplated that the terms of the final Shell-enXco agreement might differ from those indicated in the Shell letter of intent. Those contentions enable us to frame the legal issue more precisely: did Section 1.7 (or some other provision) of the UPA condition BLGH's entitlement to a bonus payment upon there being no material or substantial difference between the terms of the final enXco-Shell agreement and the terms indicated in the Shell letter of intent?
enXco argues that that condition is implicit in the UPA. As support, enXco relies
enXco's position is fatally flawed for three reasons. First, nowhere in the UPA can any express requirement of "substantial" or "material" compliance be found. Second, the meaning that enXco ascribes to "outlined" burdens that term with far more precision than it can reasonably bear when read in context. Even were we to accept as reasonable enXco's definition of "outlined," enXco's position still rests on an inaccurate premise—that Section 1.7 refers to a transaction "outlined" in the Shell letter of intent (Exhibit E of the UPA).
Stated differently, neither Section 1.7 nor Section 6.1(f) of the UPA articulates any explicit text that prescribes what specific terms the final enXco-Shell agreement must contain to trigger BLGH's right to a bonus payment. If any such requirement exists, it must be found in the Shell letter of intent (Exhibit E), which is incorporated by reference into the UPA, and is the only potential source of any legally binding description or "outline" of the "transaction" referred to in Section 1.7 of the UPA.
That brings us to the third fatal flaw in enXco's position: the Shell letter of intent, by its own terms, defeats enXco's argument. That document expressly conditioned the "consummation of the Proposed Transaction" on the negotiation of a final agreement containing the indicative terms "set forth on Exhibit A . . . as those terms may be modified, deleted or added to in each parties' sole discretion."
It may well be that the final terms of the Shell-Beacon contract were less favorable to enXco than those indicated in the Shell letter of intent. Even so, the transaction "outlined" in that letter of intent still met the requirements of Section 1.7 of the UPA: the Shell letter of intent was never terminated or abandoned as different terms were negotiated, and an agreement between enXco and Shell (albeit on modified terms) was ultimately reached. Nothing more was required by the UPA for BLGH to become legally entitled to the bonus payment. Accordingly, the Superior Court erred as a matter of law in granting summary judgment to enXco.
For the above reasons, the judgment of the Superior Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this Opinion. Jurisdiction is not retained.