# Jpmorgan Chase Bank, N.A. v. City of Corsicana and Navarro County

> Texas Supreme Court · May 8, 2026

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11323658

## Case

- **Court:** Texas Supreme Court
- **Decided:** May 8, 2026
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Opinion of the court by Blacklock
- **Judges:** Blacklock
- **Cited by:** 0 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

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## Opinion text

Supreme Court of Texas
══════════
No. 24-0102
══════════

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.,
Petitioner,

v.

City of Corsicana and Navarro County,
Respondents

═══════════════════════════════════════
On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the Tenth District of Texas
═══════════════════════════════════════

Argued September 11, 2025

CHIEF JUSTICE BLACKLOCK delivered the opinion of the Court.

Justice Lehrmann and Justice Devine did not participate in the
decision.

Several clauses of the Texas Constitution require that public
money be used only for public purposes. Known as the Gift Clauses,
these nineteenth-century provisions arose from skepticism about
entanglement between public funds and private enterprise. This Court
has derived three principles from the text and history of the Gift
Clauses. A grant of money to a private entity must not be gratuitous;
its predominant objective must be to accomplish a legitimate public
purpose; and the government must retain control over the funds to
ensure that the public purpose is served. See Borgelt v. Aus. Firefighters
Ass’n, 692 S.W.3d 288, 301 (Tex. 2024).
In 1987, Texans ratified article III, section 52-a, which authorizes
the legislature to permit “loans and grants of public money” for, as
relevant here, “the public purposes of development and diversification
of the economy.” Until today, this Court had not addressed the
provision. This case asks whether our longstanding Gift Clause
precedents continue to govern the economic-development grants and
loans authorized by section 52-a. The answer is yes. Economic-
development grants authorized by section 52-a remain subject to the
Gift Clauses’ requirements.
As explained below, section 52-a was adopted primarily to
establish that “development and diversification of the economy” would
qualify as a legitimate public purpose under this Court’s pre-existing
Gift Clause cases. Nothing in section 52-a’s text or history indicates a
desire to exempt economic-development projects from the kind of
constitutional scrutiny to which the Gift Clauses subject all public
expenditures in Texas. The Gift Clauses’ prohibition on gratuities and
requirement of adequate controls therefore continue to apply when state
and local governments spend public funds on economic development.
The court of appeals resolved this threshold legal question
correctly. We disagree, however, with its application of our Gift Clause
precedent to the circumstances of this case. To spur development of a
large new shopping center, the City of Corsicana and Navarro County

2
pledged future sales-tax revenues to finance the construction of a
Gander Mountain store to anchor the shopping center. When the
Gander Mountain store closed after eleven years in business, the City
and the County stopped making payments under the theory that the
store’s closure extinguished the public purpose of the economic-
development agreements. The lower courts agreed with the City and
County and granted summary judgment.
We take a different view. The City and County could have
negotiated an agreement that made continued payments contingent on
continued operation of the planned Gander Mountain store. They did
not. Even so, the government cannot make an unconstitutional payment
merely because a contract purports to require it. But the constitutional
question in this case, as distinct from the contractual question, cannot
be neatly reduced to whether a particular Gander Mountain store
continued to operate throughout the life of the parties’ agreements.
What matters for constitutional purposes is whether: (1) the
expenditure is not gratuitous but instead brings a public benefit; (2) the
predominant objective is to accomplish a legitimate public purpose, not
to provide a benefit to a private party; and (3) the government retains
control over the funds to ensure that the public purpose is in fact
accomplished. Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 301. This constitutional inquiry
does not ask whether the parties’ economic expectations for the project
have come to pass precisely as initially envisioned. Instead, courts
assessing the constitutionality of an economic-development deal must
take into account not merely the parties’ contractual goals but also any
other facts indicating whether the deal was genuinely designed to, and

3
actually did, advance the public purpose of economic development,
which the people of Texas have declared a valid public purpose.
In this case, despite the Gander Mountain store’s eventual
failure, the disputed grants apparently facilitated the development of a
shopping center that has generated considerable economic activity and
tax revenue both during and after Gander Mountain’s eleven-year
occupancy of the site. The closure of the particular business envisioned
at the outset of the arrangement does not, as a constitutional matter,
establish that the project serves no public purpose or that its controls
were constitutionally inadequate. Summary judgment for the City and
County was therefore improper. The judgments below are reversed, and
the case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.

I.

In December 2003, the Corsicana Chamber of Commerce pitched
now-defunct outdoor retailer Gander Mountain on a $16 million
incentive package to develop a flagship store in Corsicana. The Gander
Mountain, together with a planned Home Depot, would anchor a
132-acre business park called “Corsicana Crossing.” In return, Gander
Mountain would receive 2% of the sales tax from its store and the Home
Depot and 1% of the sales tax from any new development, among other
incentives.
Within a few months, the City of Corsicana and Navarro County
authorized agreements with the Corsicana Industrial Foundation—a
nonprofit corporation that owned the project site—to build the Gander
Mountain facility. The City granted the Foundation 1.5% of the sales

4
tax generated by Gander Mountain and Home Depot and 0.75% from
other businesses in the shopping center. Navarro County granted 0.5%
and 0.25%, respectively. The Foundation agreed to use the dedicated
funds solely to repay debt incurred for the facility’s construction. To that
end, the agreements required the City and County to deposit the pledged
sales-tax proceeds into a “Grant Fund,” into which all grant proceeds
were placed and from which funds could be withdrawn only to pay the
construction-loan debt. The agreements’ stated purpose was “to
facilitate the development of the Retail Center and assist in the
implementation of the economic-development objectives of the” City and
County.
A few months later, the City, County, Foundation, and Gander
Mountain executed another agreement. This agreement stated that it
was “in the public interest to promote the economic development of the
Gander Mountain Facility” and to commit portions of sales-tax revenue
“to facilitate such economic development.” Payments would begin
“following the completion and opening of Gander Mountain.” In return,
the Foundation agreed to take out a $10 million construction loan—with
the tax payments pledged as security—and to use the money solely for
constructing the facility.
At the same time, the Foundation and Gander Mountain executed
a lease for the site. The base rent equaled the quarterly loan payment
minus the sales-tax grants. Gander Mountain could purchase the
premises for $1 once the loan was paid off or the lease expired. The lease

5
also anticipated a separate development agreement that would set out
each party’s obligations concerning the project.1
The store opened in August 2004, and things worked as planned
for the next eleven years. Gander Mountain operated continuously; the
City and County together paid about $150,000 per quarter in sales-tax
revenues to the Foundation; and the Foundation used the money to
service the loan. The record leaves little doubt that “Gander Mountain
contributed to the success of the center for more than a decade,” such
that the “Corsicana Crossing [shopping center] may not have
materialized without Gander Mountain.”
Gander Mountain closed the store in 2015, apparently after
discovering structural defects in the building. The shopping center,
however, continued to operate. It also continued to generate substantial
tax revenues. Gander Mountain’s former spot in Corsicana Crossing is
now occupied by Fun Town RV, which sells RVs and related products.
In February 2016, the City and County each decided that the
closure of Gander Mountain ended the public purposes justifying the
grants. They sued the Foundation and Gander Mountain, seeking
declaratory judgment on five issues:

1. Whether closing the store extinguished the public
purposes authorizing the grants;

2. Whether the agreements and related documents lacked
sufficient controls to ensure those purposes were met;

1 This agreement is not in the record.

6
3. Whether the agreements were unconstitutional because
they allowed public funds to be spent without adequate
safeguards;

4. Whether continuing to grant sales-tax revenue after the
store’s closure would be unconstitutional; and

5. Whether the agreements were unconstitutional to the
extent they required such payments once public
purposes ceased.
The defendants responded with counterclaims. JPMorgan Chase,
the project’s lender, intervened. The City and County moved for partial
summary judgment on their declaratory-judgment claims. Shortly
after, Gander Mountain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The trial court
granted summary judgment for the City and County and entered final
judgment declaring the agreements unconstitutional. The court
declared that “the closing of the Gander Mountain store extinguished
the public purposes [that] authorized the City’s and County’s grants of
public money.” It also determined that the agreements “failed to place
sufficient controls on the transaction to ensure that the public purposes
for which the original grants of sales tax were made were carried out.”
The court declared the agreements “unconstitutional, void[,] and
illegal.”
The court of appeals affirmed. 685 S.W.3d 171 (Tex. App.—Waco
2024).2 It held that article III, section 52-a does not displace the
requirements of the Gift Clauses and thus applied the framework from
Texas Municipal League Intergovernmental Risk Pool v. Texas Workers’

2 After perfecting its appeal, the Foundation assigned its rights in the

lawsuit to JPMorgan Chase. 685 S.W.3d at 177.

7
Compensation Commission (TML), 74 S.W.3d 377 (Tex. 2002). 685
S.W.3d at 180. As we recently clarified in Borgelt, that framework asks
whether: (1) the expenditure is not gratuitous but instead brings a
public benefit; (2) the predominant objective is to accomplish a
legitimate public purpose, not to provide a benefit to a private party; and
(3) the government retains control over the funds to ensure that the
public purpose is in fact accomplished. 692 S.W.3d at 301.
The court of appeals agreed that the store’s closure extinguished
the public purpose of the grants and that the agreements lacked
adequate controls. 685 S.W.3d at 182–85. It held that the agreements
were unconstitutional and affirmed summary judgment for the City and
County. Id. at 186. A dissenting Justice found the evidence insufficient
at the summary judgment stage to say that the agreements failed the
constitutional test. Id. at 186–87 (Gray, C.J., dissenting).
Chase petitioned for review, arguing that the Gift Clause
framework taken from TML and Borgelt does not apply to economic-
development grants authorized by section 52-a or, alternatively, that the
lower courts misapplied it. We granted the petition.

II.

Adopted in 1987—over a century after the Gift Clauses—
article III, section 52-a provides, as relevant here:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this constitution,
the legislature may provide for the creation of programs
and the making of loans and grants of public money . . . for
the public purposes of development and diversification of
the economy of the state, the elimination of unemployment
or underemployment in the state, . . . or the development
or expansion of transportation or commerce in the state.

8
TEX. CONST. art. III, § 52-a.
The initial question before us is this: Did section 52-a
categorically exempt economic development from the pre-existing
requirements of the Gift Clauses, as Chase contends? Or did
section 52-a establish that economic development qualifies as a public
purpose within the traditional Gift Clause framework, as the City and
County argue?
The provision’s text authorizes the legislature to provide for
economic-development grants and loans “[n]otwithstanding any other
provision of this constitution.” Chase argues that the “notwithstanding”
clause precludes any consideration of other constitutional provisions,
including the Gift Clauses. On the other hand, the provision authorizes
economic development by describing “development and diversification of
the economy” and related objectives as “public purposes” for which
public money may be spent. This phrasing, the City and County urge,
invokes the traditional Gift Clause analysis and speaks only to its
“public purpose” element. They further caution that reading section
52-a to liberate economic-development deals from the pre-existing
constitutional prohibition on gratuities or the requirement that
adequate controls ensure the achievement of a public purpose would
turn a provision designed merely to authorize economic-development
expenditures into one that gives those expenditures special privilege
above other uses of public funds.
Both positions enjoy some textual support, at least at first glance.
As with any constitutional provision, however, we must read the text of
section 52-a “not in a vacuum but also through the lenses of history and

9
precedent.” Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 299. “When history indicates that
the framers chose text that carried jurisprudential baggage beyond its
plain meaning, we must understand both the text and the baggage in
order to do our job . . . .” Hogan v. SMU, 688 S.W.3d 852, 858 (Tex.
2024). The admonition that “[w]e cannot understand constitutional
provisions unless we understand their history” long pre-dates modern
debates about methods of constitutional interpretation. Henderson v.
Beaton, 52 Tex. 29, 42 (1879) (quoting THOMAS M. COOLEY, A TREATISE
ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS WHICH REST UPON THE

LEGISLATIVE POWER OF THE STATES OF THE AMERICAN UNION 58 (Boston,
Little, Brown & Co., 4th ed. 1878)). Now, as in the past, our goal when
construing the Texas Constitution “is to understand the provision the
way it would have been understood at the time of ratification, as best we
can.” Hogan, 688 S.W.3d at 858.3 In that regard, “legislative
construction and contemporaneous exposition of a constitutional
provision is of substantial value in constitutional interpretation.” In re
Abbott, 628 S.W.3d 288, 293 (Tex. 2021) (citation modified) (quoting Am.
Indem. v. City of Austin, 246 S.W. 1019, 1023 (Tex. 1922)).
We therefore look to the legal and historical context from which
section 52-a arose, to legislative materials concerning the proposed
amendment, as well as to contemporaneous materials describing the
amendment to the voting public—all of which are useful in our effort to

3 “The fundamental rule for the government of courts in the
interpretation or construction of a Constitution is to give effect to the intent of
the people who adopted it. The meaning of a Constitution is fixed when it is
adopted; and it is not different at any subsequent time when a court has
occasion to pass upon it.” Cox v. Robison, 150 S.W. 1149, 1151 (Tex. 1912).

10
understand section 52-a’s original meaning. As explained below, these
sources lead us to agree with the City, the County, and the court of
appeals that section 52-a establishes “development and diversification
of the economy” as a legitimate public purpose but does not otherwise
exempt economic-development spending from the traditional
constitutional restrictions generally applicable to all uses of public funds
in Texas.

A.

We begin with the legal background against which section 52-a
was adopted. The amendment did not arise in isolation. It built on—
and in key respects modified—a set of longstanding constitutional
provisions that collectively bar the use of public resources for non-public
ends. To understand what the ratifiers of section 52-a intended to
permit, we must first consider what these earlier clauses were
understood, at the time, to prohibit.
“Several ‘Gift Clauses’ of the Texas Constitution prohibit
governmental entities from making ‘gifts’ of public resources to private
parties.” Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 293. Article III, sections 50, 51, and 52
together prohibit the legislature from granting—or authorizing others
to grant—public money, credit, or other “thing[s] of value” to private
persons or entities. Article XI, section 3 bars cities and counties from
making “any appropriation or donation” to private corporations or
associations. Article XVI, section 6 forbids “appropriation[s] for private
or individual purposes.” Though phrased differently, these clauses
share a single aim: “the protection of the public funds and the public
credit against misuse.” Bexar County v. Linden, 220 S.W. 761, 761 (Tex.

11
1920). Courts have long treated them as a cohesive body of law, id., and
modern cases continue to read them together, see Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at
298–300; In re State, 711 S.W.3d 641, 646 (Tex. 2024).
As Borgelt recounts, the clauses arose in reaction to
Reconstruction-era excesses, when cities and counties underwrote
speculative railroad schemes and other ventures “in anticipation of
benefits never realized.” 692 S.W.3d at 299 (quoting City of Cleburne v.
Gulf, C. & S.F. Ry., 1 S.W. 342, 342 (Tex. 1886)). Early cases read the
Gift Clauses as relatively stringent restraints on public spending,
describing their prohibitions as “absolute” and requiring that public
expenditures serve “strictly governmental purposes.” E.g., Linden, 220
S.W. at 762. In City of Cleburne, for instance, the Court held that a city
violated article XI, section 3 by purchasing a right of way and depot
grounds for a railway company or refunding money already paid for that
purpose. 1 S.W. at 343.4
Over time, the early cases’ insistence that public expenditures
serve only “strictly governmental purposes,” Linden, 220 S.W. at 762,
gave way to the perhaps broader formulation, “public purpose[s],” Byrd
v. City of Dallas, 6 S.W.2d 738, 740 (Tex. [Comm’n Op.] 1928). This shift
in nomenclature accompanied a trend toward more permissive
applications of the Gift Clauses. In Barrington v. Cokinos, for example,
this Court upheld on public-purpose grounds an arrangement

4As another example, a few decades later in City of Tyler v. Texas
Employers’ Insurance Ass’n, the commission of appeals concluded that a
workers’-compensation law would contravene the Gift Clauses if it authorized
payments for on-the-job injuries without municipal liability. 288 S.W. 409, 412
(Tex. Comm’n App. 1926, judgm’t adopted).

12
reminiscent of the very railroad subsidies that originally animated the
Gift Clauses. 338 S.W.2d 133, 145–46 (Tex. 1960). The City of
Beaumont agreed to “furnish [the] right of way for relocation of part of
[a] railroad line,” even though the railroads could have been required to
bear the cost. Id. The Court held that the grant was not an
unconstitutional “donation” because it directly advanced public safety
and convenience by eliminating sixteen grade crossings. Id. Other mid-
twentieth-century cases reflected a broadening view of “public purposes”
in other contexts. See, e.g., Davis v. City of Lubbock, 326 S.W.2d 699,
709 (Tex. 1959) (upholding urban renewal as a public purpose); State v.
City of Austin, 331 S.W.2d 737, 745–47 (Tex. 1960) (relocation of private
utility facilities); Bullock v. Calvert, 480 S.W.2d 367, 369 (Tex. 1972)
(funding party primaries).5
Even as the scope of permissible purposes shifted, the
requirement of public control and the prohibition on gratuities remained
consistent features of Gift Clause jurisprudence. In Texas

5 This broader view of permissible purposes was reflected—and perhaps

extended—in contemporary attorney general opinions, which local officials
often sought before implementing new measures and which, in practice, seem
to have informed the common understanding of what local governments could
do with respect to public financing. See, e.g., James G. Dickson, Jr., Vital
Crucible of the Law: Politics and Procedures of the Advisory Opinion Function
of the Texas Attorney General, 9 HOU. L. REV. 495, 528 (1972) (describing the
contemporary role of attorney general opinions). Indeed, one Texas
constitutional historian writing at the time observed that “the attorney general
[was] principally responsible for taking the cited cases and drawing the new
[public-purpose] rule from them.” GEORGE D. BRADEN ET AL., THE
CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF TEXAS: AN ANNOTATED AND COMPARATIVE
ANALYSIS 234 (1977) (first citing Tex. Att’y Gen. LA-6, LA-9 (1973); and then
citing Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. Nos. H-120 (1973), M-391 (1969), C-584 (1966), C-530
(1965)).

13
Pharmaceutical Ass’n v. Dooley, for example, the court invalidated a
grant to a private corporation because it was not “subject to any control
of the State Board of Pharmacy.” 90 S.W.2d 328, 330 (Tex. App.—Austin
1936, no writ). And in Gillham v. City of Dallas, the court upheld a bond
issue for private cold-storage facilities only “[s]o long as the City
authorities supervise[d] and control[led] the contemplated buildings and
the business conducted therein.” 207 S.W.2d 978, 983 (Tex. App.—
Dallas 1948, writ ref’d n.r.e.).
Courts likewise had long viewed consideration as an important
way of distinguishing between a lawful exchange and a prohibited gift.
As this Court held in the then-seminal Gift Clause case, Linden,
“If . . . the effect of the statute is to bestow funds of the State upon [an
entity] as a gratuity . . . it would be invalid.” 220 S.W. at 762. Thus, “a
pure gift or donation”—a grant or payment not supported by “legal
consideration”—plainly violates the Gift Clauses. Tompkins v.
Williams, 62 S.W.2d 70, 71 (Tex. Comm’n App. 1933, judgm’t approved).
On the other hand, “[i]t is not the granting of a gratuity for the county
to grant a privilege for which it receives substantially the value thereof
in return.” Dodson v. Marshall, 118 S.W.2d 621, 624 (Tex. App.—Waco
1938, writ dism’d).
Thus, there remained a settled understanding in the years
preceding section 52-a’s ratification—even as prevailing conceptions of
permissible “public purpose” evolved—that any public expenditures in
connection with private enterprise must “include[] sufficient controls to
assure that the public purpose would actually be served” and provide
“assurance that the contracting governmental entity would receive

14
adequate consideration or benefit for the services provided to private
parties.” E.g., Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-1010, 2 (1977).
Although the scope of permissible public purposes seems to have
expanded over time, it was typically not thought to include expenditures
for pure economic development. The Court wrote in Barrington that
while the Gift Clauses do not prohibit “business dealings with private
corporations and associations” so long as a public purpose is directly
accomplished, public funds still “may not be used simply to obtain for
the community and its citizens the general benefits resulting from the
operation of such an enterprise.” 338 S.W.2d at 140.
Barrington’s conception of public purpose had the effect of
frustrating various economic-development proposals in the years
leading up to section 52-a’s enactment. In 1973, the attorney general
declined to approve industrial-development revenue bonds by the City
of McAllen to fund the purchase of land for commercial development.
See BRADEN, supra, at 234 (discussing this episode); see also City of
McAllen v. Hill, No. B-4315, 17 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 128 (Dec. 19, 1973)
(mandamus relief denied without opinion). The next year, the Texas
Industrial Commission asked for an attorney general opinion on
whether “a city may purchase property to be used by private industry by
giving a note to be repaid out of the revenues generated by the property.”
Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-357, 1 (1974). The attorney general concluded
that “it is not considered a public purpose within this legal context[]
when municipal credit is used to obtain for the community and its
citizens the general benefits resulting from the operation of a private
industry.” Id. at 5 (citing Barrington, 338 S.W.2d at 140). Also in 1974,

15
a county’s proposal to fund its local chamber of commerce for the purpose
of “promoting industrial development in the county” was disapproved by
the attorney general, who called the proposal an impermissible “attempt
to secure for the community and its citizens by subscription to a private
corporation general benefits resulting from encouragement of private
industry and business.” Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-397, 1–2 (1974)
(citing Barrington, 338 S.W.2d at 140).
Thus, in the years leading up to section 52-a’s adoption, it was
“generally conceded in Texas that ‘pure’ industrial development bonds
of the type involved in McAllen vs. Hill [were] not permissible.” Mike
Willatt, Constitutional Restrictions on Use of Public Money and Public
Credit, 38 TEX. B.J. 413, 417 (1975). Nevertheless, the precise contours
of the “public purpose” requirement remained shifting and elusive,
prompting a 1984 attorney general opinion to observe—regrettably, but
not without foundation—that “[n]o fixed rule delineates exactly what
constitutes a public purpose.” Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. JM-220, 4 (1984).

B.

Against this legal background, the primary historical impetus for
section 52-a was the 1980s oil bust. Crude prices dropped from $35 a
barrel in 1981 to around $10 by 1986. See M. RAY PERRYMAN, SURVIVE
AND CONQUER: TEXAS IN THE ’80S, at 40–41, 82, 106–11 (1990). A Texas
economy heavily dependent on oil suffered widespread layoffs, business
failures, and sharp drops in state and local revenues. Id. In the wake
of the bust, “economic development” soon became “the ‘buzz word’ in
legislative and business circles across Texas.” Amy Kems,
Diversification Called Key to State Problems, BAYTOWN SUN, Oct. 16,

16
1987, at 1-A.6 As the 70th Legislature prepared to convene in 1987, the
question was not whether it should do something about economic
development, but what it would do.
Before the 1987 legislative session began, House Speaker Gib
Lewis created an “Economic Advisory Group” to “suggest ways to
revitalize the state’s economy.” See Jack Keever, Speaker Lewis
Announces Economic Advisory Panel, KERRVILLE DAILY TIMES, May 30,
1986, at 5-A. The resulting report called for state-sponsored efforts to
“create research parks, assemble venture capital, facilitate the creation
of business incubators, and the like.” ECON. ADVISORY GRP.,
ALTERNATIVES FOR REVITALIZING AND DIVERSIFYING THE ECONOMY OF
TEXAS 5 (1987).
The report identified an obstacle: constitutional uncertainty over
using public funds to support private enterprise. Id. at 23. It noted that
“[m]any of [its] proposed recommendations . . . call[ed] for the use of
public funds for loans, grants, and other types of assistance to private
entities.” Id. But there was “uncertainty with respect to the
constitutionality of the Texas Legislature providing direct grants and
loans to accomplish the purpose of economic diversification.” Id. “The
best legal position,” the report concluded, “is that public moneys can be
used for a program as long as the legislature is accomplishing a public
purpose.” Id. But “[t]he problem with this is that the determination of

6 Not everyone was sold on the idea: “The wise watcher of public affairs

will keep eyes and ears open for the next seven months for what is done in the
name of the newest Texas buzzword—‘economic development.’” Sam Kinch,
Jr., Beware of ‘Economic Development’ Promises, LAKE TRAVIS VIEW, Nov. 5,
1986, at 4.

17
public purpose is subject to review by the Attorney General or the courts
to determine whether the legislature or the political subdivisions have
abused their discretion in determining that a public purpose will be
accomplished.” Id.
The report continued: “In an effort to eliminate this confusion and
uncertainty, the Advisory Group recommends that there be a
Constitutional Amendment [that] would clearly authorize the
legislature to make grants and loans for a wider range of projects [that]
would stimulate economic diversification and encourage employment.”
Id. This recommendation, it appears, was the genesis of section 52-a.7
House Joint Resolution 5 proposed a constitutional amendment
“authorizing the legislature to provide for loans and grants of public
money related to state economic development.” Act of May 20, 1987,
70th Leg., R.S., 1987 Tex. Gen. Laws 4122 (Tex. H.J. Res. 5) (filed Feb.
6, 1987). The resolution proposed the text of section 52-a substantially
as adopted. Id.
Testimony at public hearings emphasized that the amendment
was needed to remove uncertainty in determinations of public purpose,
particularly as to the economic-development legislation then being
proposed. Representative Ashley Smith, the amendment’s sponsor,
urged that proponents of these efforts did not “want to continue to have

7 See Hearings on H.J. Res. 5 Before the House Comm. on Sci. & Tech.,

70th Leg., R.S. (Mar. 3, 1987) [hereinafter Committee Hearing] (statement of
Jerry Turner) (tape available from the House Video/Audio Servs. Off.) (Side A -
14:38–14:48) (“I suppose I should mention that the recommendation for this
legislation [proposing section 52-a] grew out of the Speaker’s task force on
economic development.”).

18
to go back to the courts to ask for an interpretation of what public
purpose is, nor . . . to go back each time to the attorney general and ask
for a determination of public purpose.” Committee Hearing (8:15–8:26).
The proposed constitutional amendment, Smith explained, would thus
“clarify the specific applications under this series of bills . . . [and] give
definition to the public purpose.” Id. (8:45–8:58).
The theme of resolving uncertainty about what constitutes a
public purpose carried through as the proposal moved to the House and
Senate floors. In both chambers, the measure was presented not as a
break with the Gift Clauses but as a clarification, intended to remove
lingering constitutional doubts and to affirm that programs promoting
economic diversification could rest securely on a declared public
purpose.8
Several official bill analyses reinforced this understanding. One
warned that Texas would “have difficulty in implementing these models
of financing for economic development . . . until constitutional language
that clarifies economic development as a public purpose is adopted.”
House Comm. on Sci. & Tech., Bill Analysis, Tex. H.J. Res. 5, 70th Leg.,
R.S. 1 (1987). Another observed that “the courts have generally
interpreted existing constitutional provisions to permit grants for public
purposes” and that, “[s]ince the product development fund and the small
business incubator fund are intended to benefit the public by fostering
economic growth and diversity, this proposed change is in the spirit of

8 Debate on H.J. Res. 5 on the Floor of the House, 70th Leg., R.S. (Apr.

7, 1987) (tape available from the House Video/Audio Servs. Off.) (24:49–25:02);
Debate on H.J. Res. 5 on the Floor of the Senate, 70th Leg., R.S. (May 14, 1987)
(tape available from the Tex. State Libr. & Archives Comm’n) (6:00–6:20).

19
the current provisions.” House Rsch. Org., Bill Analysis, Tex. H.J. Res.
5, 70th Leg., R.S. 2 (1987). Yet because uncertainty persisted, “it would
be prudent to clarify that public loans and grants for economic
development . . . are indeed for public purposes and constitutionally
acceptable.” Id. Another analysis chalked the need for the amendment
up to the attorney general’s historical view that “a grant for the purpose
of obtaining the general benefits resulting from the operation of a
private industry is not for a public purpose.”9
The legislative record thus reveals a consistent theme. At each
stage of section 52-a’s progress toward passage, lawmakers accepted
that the Gift Clauses barred the use of public funds for private ends but
recognized that existing interpretations had cast doubt on whether
assistance to private enterprise could ever serve a public purpose.
Section 52-a resolved that tension. It clarified that programs promoting
economic diversification, employment, agriculture, and industrial
development would qualify as serving a public purpose even when the
immediate recipients were private entities.

C.

By the time section 52-a reached the ballot in November 1987, it
was one of a “record 25 proposed constitutional amendments plus two

9 LEGIS. COUNCIL, ANALYSES OF PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENTS AND REFERENDA APPEARING ON THE NOVEMBER 3, 1987, BALLOT
14 (1987) (citing Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-357 (1974)).

20
referenda”—the longest constitutional ballot in Texas history.10 Amid
the clutter, Proposition 4—the measure proposing section 52-a—
received comparatively little attention, overshadowed by other
proposals (like whether to permit racetrack betting).11 What
descriptions there were of the amendment tended to be fairly generic:
“To provide public monies to private companies encouraging
development.”12
The amendment was often presented as part of a package of
“Build Texas” amendments comprising constitutional authorization for
toll-road expansion, business and agricultural development funds, tax
exemptions, public-works financing, and $500 million to attract a
federal supercollider project.13 What little focused attention the
amendment received in the press was generally consistent with the view

10 Too Many Questions on November Ballot, AMARILLO SUNDAY NEWS-

GLOBE, Aug. 16, 1987 (emphasis omitted) (clip on file with the Legis. Reference
Libr.).
11 See Bruce Hight, Texas Voters Must Tackle Amendments, AUS. AM.-

STATESMAN, July 23, 1987 (clip on file with the Legis. Reference Libr.) (“The
issue that probably will attract the most voter attention is whether to permit
pari-mutuel betting on horse races.”); Kenneth F. Bunting, Voting May Seem
More Like 20 Questions, FT. WOR. STAR-TELEGRAM, Oct. 18, 1987 (clip on file
with the Legis. Reference Libr.) (“[B]ecause the spotlight seems to be trained
on racing, advocates of other propositions are scrambling to focus attention on
their causes.”).
12 Texas Voter’s Guide, HONDO ANVIL HERALD, Oct. 29, 1987, at 13B; see

also, e.g., Enterprise Recaps Lengthy Ballot List, BEAUMONT ENTER., Oct. 31,
1987 (clip on file with the Legis. Reference Libr.) (“Amendment 4, which would
allow public loans and grants for economic development.”).
13 See, e.g., Build Texas Package Deserves Voters’ OK, BEAUMONT
ENTER., Oct. 28, 1987 (clip on file with the Legis. Reference Libr.) (describing
the Build Texas package and listing Proposition 4).

21
that it was thought to clarify what counts as a public purpose. The
Texas Research League explained to voters that “the courts have
interpreted [the Gift Clauses] to permit grants or loans as long as they
are deemed to be for ‘public purposes.’” A Constitutional Heritage Left
by the Carpetbaggers: The 1987 Constitutional Amendments, Tex. Rsch.
League, Sep.–Oct. 1987, at 5. “However, the general principles used to
determine what constitutes a ‘public purpose’ often leave doubt in any
given case.” Id. “Thus, some feel that specific constitutional authority
is needed to prevent challenges to various economic programs that
might be undertaken and funded by the state and/or local governments.”
Id.
Likewise, an editorial-board endorsement noted that the
amendment “would clarify that public loans and grants for economic
development . . . are for public purposes and constitutionally
acceptable.” Amendment 4, KERRVILLE DAILY TIMES, Oct. 20, 1987, at 4.
Others explained that the amendment was necessary because, “in order
to use state money or credit for anything other than strictly public
purposes, a separate constitutional exception must be made.”14
The ballot language rather vaguely asked voters to approve “[t]he
constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide
assistance to encourage economic development in the state.” Sample

14 Sam Kinch, Jr., A Quiet, But Radical, Shift, DALL. MORNING NEWS,

Aug. 7, 1987 (clip on file with the Legis. Reference Libr.); see also Voters Guide:
Constitutional Amendment Election November 3, 1987, TULIA HERALD, Oct. 22,
1987, at 24 (“It would clarify that loans and grants for public purposes such as
the Product Development Fund, the Small Business Incubator Fund, and the
Agricultural Fund included in proposed Amendment 6 are constitutionally
acceptable and would prevent any delay or confusion . . . .”).

22
Ballot, POLK CNTY. ENTER., Nov. 1, 1987. In the end, Proposition 4
passed narrowly, with 51.7% of the vote, although half of the measures
in the “Build Texas” package failed. See Final Vote Totals, TULIA
HERALD, Nov. 12, 1987, at 5.

D.

The legal and historical background preceding section 52-a, as
well as the contemporaneous debate and commentary surrounding its
enactment, together demonstrate that section 52-a was thought, at the
time, to resolve a discrete legal problem: uncertainty over whether
governments were pursuing a permissible public purpose when they
spent public money to promote private economic growth. The
amendment resolved that uncertainty by expressly describing
“development and diversification of the economy of the state” and
related goals as “public purposes.” Nothing suggests that anyone
thought they were approving gratuitous payments to private companies,
dispensing with the need for controls sufficient to ensure the
achievement of a public purpose, or otherwise affording special status to
economic-development spending not enjoyed by any other category of
government spending under longstanding Gift Clause precedent.
The principal effect of section 52-a, instead, was this: There may
no longer be any judicial second-guessing that “development and
diversification of the economy” is a valid public purpose for which
governments in Texas may spend public funds. In other words, unlike
before section 52-a, governments may now use public funds for the
public purpose of obtaining “the general benefits resulting from the
operation” of private enterprise. Contra Barrington, 338 S.W.2d at 140.

23
The long-recognized, separate requirements of control and
consideration—applicable to all government spending, not just to
economic development—remain the means by which courts and
taxpayers can distinguish a valid economic-development grant from an
unconstitutional give-away. Continuing to require control and
consideration under the Gift Clauses does not undermine or conflict with
section 52-a’s authorization of economic-development spending. It
instead ensures that expenditures labeled “economic development” are
genuinely made in pursuit of, and designed to actually achieve, their
ostensible public purpose. Our constitution, after all, “must be obeyed
in reality, not just in form.” Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 310. And “it is easy
to adorn an otherwise-illegal transfer to a private recipient with a mere
bauble of public purpose.” Id. at 304.
This approach remains faithful to section 52-a’s text and our
precedent. Section 52-a allows the legislature to authorize the use of
“public money . . . for the public purposes of development and
diversification of the economy of the state.” TEX. CONST. art. III, § 52-a.
By 1987, whether a grant of public funds accomplished a “public
purpose” had become one of the three key components of the Gift Clause
test. See supra II.A–C; see also TML, 74 S.W.3d at 383–84; Borgelt, 692
S.W.3d at 301. And while ordinarily “we presume that the Legislature
acted with knowledge of [the] background law and with reference to it,”
In re Facebook, Inc., 625 S.W.3d 80, 97 (Tex. 2021) (citation modified),
in this case no presumption is needed. Those who proposed section 52-a
said so plainly. They cast the amendment as a clarification within the
existing Gift Clause framework, designed to dispel uncertainty about

24
what constituted a public purpose, not to discard the parallel
requirements of consideration and control. Put simply,
there is no language in either section 52-a or in the relevant
commentary to suggest that the amendment was intended
to change the requirements that public resources and
powers be used for “the direct accomplishment of a public
purpose” and that transactions using such resources and
powers contain sufficient controls “to [e]nsure that the
public purpose be carried out.”
Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. JM-1255, 8–9 (1990) (quoting Tex. Att’y Gen.
Op. No. JM-1229, 6 (1990)). We therefore hold that section 52-a
establishes “development and diversification of the economy” as a
legitimate public purpose but does not otherwise supplant the
traditional Gift Clause scrutiny that has long been applicable to
government spending in Texas.

III.

With that understanding in mind, we turn to the facts of this case
to determine whether the economic-development arrangement in
question satisfies section 52-a and the Gift Clauses. We conclude that
it likely does, which means that summary judgment for the City and
County was improper.

A.

The first question under section 52-a is whether the payments at
issue were “for” the “public purposes of development and diversification
of the economy.” TEX. CONST. art. III, § 52-a. If the payments were “for”
those purposes, as they would have been understood in 1987, then the
constitutional inquiry on this point is complete. To answer that

25
question, we look not to present-day policy preferences but to the
understanding of economic development and diversification that
prevailed when section 52-a was adopted, and to the kinds of
arrangements that the amendment was intended to bring within
constitutional bounds.
We need not explore the outer bounds of what expenditures may
be “for the public purposes of development and diversification of the
economy.” Even under a restrained view, the arrangement here—an
agreement by which local governments dedicated portions of the tax
revenue associated with a construction project and its related
commercial area in order to attract new businesses and create jobs in
the area—comfortably falls within that category. The history of section
52-a makes clear that this is precisely the kind of “conventional
economic-development grant[]” that the framers of the amendment
intended to authorize. In re State, 711 S.W.3d at 647.
As discussed above, prior to section 52-a, courts generally took a
dim view of claims that economic-development spending advanced a
public purpose. See, e.g., Barrington, 338 S.W.2d at 140. Thus, an
arrangement much like the one here, in which a city financed a private
facility with debt tied to the project’s future revenues, was considered
an unconstitutional “attempt to secure for the community and its
citizens the general benefits resulting from encouragement of private
industry.” Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-357, 5 (1974).
Section 52-a was adopted to change that result. Indeed, the
official bill analysis traced the need for section 52-a to Attorney General
Opinion No. H-357, which disapproved a city’s use of revenue-backed

26
financing to acquire land for lease to private industry, with repayment
tied to revenues generated by the project. See LEGIS. COUNCIL, supra,
at 14. The conclusion of Opinion No. H-357 could almost have been
written in response to a request for advice on the very project at issue in
this case:
It is not constitutionally permissible for a city to purchase
land for future industrial development by means of a
promissory note to be paid out of revenues generated by the
land without recourse to the city when the benefit to the
public from such a purchase is such benefit as may be
derived from the attraction of new industry.
Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. H-357, 5 (1974).
There is therefore no doubt that those who adopted section 52-a
would have understood revenue-backed financing of the kind at issue
here as among the valid means of pursuing the newly declared public
purpose of economic development. As in the programs that prompted
Attorney General Opinion No. H-357 and the adoption of section 52-a,
the City and County committed a defined share of future public revenues
associated with the new development to service debt incurred to pay for
property that a private enterprise would occupy and operate. The
pledged tax revenues and rental income were dedicated to repaying the
loan, while the governments retained no ownership or operational role
in the facility but expected that their participation would stimulate
commerce, employment, and tax growth in the surrounding area. This
structure fits comfortably within the type of activity the 1987
amendment was plainly designed to allow. Cf. id. at 1–5. The
expenditures at issue were thus “for” the “public purposes of

27
development and diversification of the economy” as those words would
have been understood in 1987. TEX. CONST. art. III, § 52-a.

B.

The court of appeals approached the question of public purpose
by identifying the particular economic activity the deal sought to bring
about and then asking whether the deal continued to generate that
specific activity and contained controls to ensure it would do so. The
court identified the deal’s public purpose as the operation of the Gander
Mountain store, a purpose that of course vanished when the store closed.
685 S.W.3d at 181–83. The district court took a similar view, declaring
that “the closing of the Gander Mountain store extinguished the public
purposes [that] authorized the City’s and County’s grants of public
money.”
This approach misapprehended the constitutional inquiry. The
relevant question is not whether the specific economic activity
envisioned by the parties has been accomplished and sustained. The
question, instead, is whether the arrangement genuinely serves the
purpose of economic development, which the people of Texas have
declared to be public and valid—and whether it contains controls
adequate to ensure economic development actually takes place.
A tenant-specific approach to the constitutional question lacks
grounding in the constitutional text and would generate curious results.
Consider a city that agrees to subsidize the construction of a private
commercial facility on the premise that it will attract visitors, create
jobs, and generate tax revenue. Suppose the original business later
closes, and another company steps in to run a similar enterprise,

28
producing the same or greater public benefits. But the city refuses to
continue the subsidy because the new owner lacks the original operator’s
political ties. Could the city set up the Gift Clauses as a defense to
continued payments on the theory that the purpose of the incentives was
beneficiary-specific? Surely not. That scenario illustrates the very
cronyism the Gift Clauses exist to prevent.
Next, suppose the economic-development agreement says that the
subsidy is “for the operation of the XYZ Retail Store.” Years later, that
store closes and a new retailer opens in the same building, generating
the same economic activity, jobs, and tax revenue that justified the
public investment in the first place. Does the constitution obligate the
city to cease payments—even though the expenditures continue to be
“for” the “public purposes of development and diversification of the
economy of the state”—because the original contract was specific to a
particular retailer? Again, surely not. Contractual purpose is not
coterminous with constitutional purpose. Cf. Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 308
(“[A] breach of contract is not necessarily evidence that the contract is
itself unconstitutional. . . . Not all contractual violations (indeed, very
few) are of constitutional significance.” (footnote omitted)). The
government is free to use contracts to restrict the scope of what it is
permitted to pay for, but it cannot use contracts to restrict the scope of
what the constitution will permit it to pay for.
The lower courts’ singular focus on the lifespan of the Gander
Mountain store was therefore misplaced. The constitutional question is
not whether a particular tenant—or any other particular economic
activity envisioned at the outset of the deal—remains in place. The

29
question is whether the expenditures by the City and County genuinely
serve the public purpose of economic development in some concrete and
actual way—even if it is not in precisely the way the parties initially
envisioned. A deal that is genuinely designed to promote economic
development, and actually does so, does not cease to be constitutional
merely because the economic benefits it generates down the road are not
the same ones the parties initially envisioned. In other words, the
continued operation of a Gander Mountain store would have been one
way for the deal’s proponents to demonstrate that their arrangement
actually promoted economic development. But it was not the only way.
Chase contends that the disputed grants were designed to—and
actually did—facilitate not just an eleven-year tenancy by Gander
Mountain but also the development of a shopping district that has
generated considerable economic activity and tax revenue both during
and after Gander Mountain’s departure. That appears to be the case,
based on the limited record before us. In any event, summary judgment
for the City and County premised on the closure of the Gander Mountain
store was improper and must be reversed.

C.

An overly narrow conception of the deal’s public purpose also
infected the lower courts’ analysis of controls. Because they treated the
Gander Mountain store itself as the only constitutionally relevant
objective, the lower courts asked whether the contracts contained
sufficient controls to ensure the store’s continuing operation. The
answer, of course, was no—there is no longer a Gander Mountain store
in Corsicana. On that mistaken premise—that the sole public purpose

30
was the continued operation of a single store—the courts concluded that
the agreements lacked sufficient controls to ensure the accomplishment
of a public purpose. Properly considered, however, these agreements
likely contained sufficient safeguards to satisfy the constitutional
requirement that the government “retain public control over the funds
to ensure that the public purpose [of economic development] is
accomplished and to protect the public’s investment.” TML, 74 S.W.3d
at 384.
Three features of the arrangement inform that conclusion. First,
the interlocal agreement provided that payments would only begin
“following the completion and opening of Gander Mountain.” In other
words, public funds would not be spent until the initial economic-
development goal—attracting an anchor store for the new shopping
district—was achieved. That “pay-for-performance” design is a useful
control: it prevents “no-strings-attached” payments, ties disbursements
to a defined economic deliverable, and ensures that public funds are not
advanced for speculative private uses that may not actually turn out to
serve public purposes. All of these, we have held, are core aims of the
Gift Clauses. See Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 308–10; In re State, 711 S.W.3d
at 646–47.15

15 Indeed, speculative cash advances on construction projects were one

of the very evils that gave rise to the Gift Clauses. See DEBATES IN THE TEXAS
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1875, at 116, 131–32 (Seth Shepard McKay
ed., 1930); SETH SHEPARD MCKAY, SEVEN DECADES OF THE TEXAS
CONSTITUTION OF 1876, at 110 (1942) (“The extravagant abuse of [cash grants
to railways] by the radical Davis administration, which increased the bonded
debt of the state by several million dollars, caused the people to amend the
constitution in 1874 by forbidding money subsidies . . . .”).

31
Second, the agreements required that the City’s and County’s
contributions be held in a separate account to be used “solely” to pay off
the debt from the construction project. The funds in the account could
“not be used for any other purpose.” That structure prevented public
funds from being spent on unrelated private ventures. As Borgelt
explained, restrictions that confine the use of funds to specified,
authorized purposes are a recognized means of retaining public control
and ensuring that the public purpose is accomplished. 692 S.W.3d at
309–10; see also Jefferson County v. Bd. of Cnty. & Dist. Rd.
Indebtedness, 182 S.W.2d 908, 913 (Tex. 1944) (“[T]hese funds are not
granted to such counties for unrestricted use by them. Such funds can
be used only for the purpose of constructing public roads . . . .”).
Third, the agreements tied the governments’ financial obligations
to the economic activity generated by the project by pegging the amount
of each payment to a percentage of sales-tax revenue generated within
the shopping district. Public funds were not granted in fixed amounts
or lump sums; they moved in direct proportion to the success of the
project’s economic goals. This structure conditioned the flow of public
money on whether or not economic activity and development was
actually happening as promised, thereby closely aligning the public
expenditures with their constitutionally permitted purpose.
These features of the deal, taken together, tend to demonstrate
sufficient “public control over the funds to ensure that the public
purpose [of economic development] is accomplished and to protect the
public’s investment.” TML, 74 S.W.3d at 384. Summary judgment for

32
the City and County on the question of adequate controls was therefore
improper.

D.

The final requirement is that the government receive a return
benefit in exchange for its expenditures. Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 301–02;
TML, 74 S.W.3d at 384–85. The record reflects that the City and County
received such a benefit. No one disputes that a large retail store capable
of anchoring the new shopping district was built. Nor does anyone
dispute that the funds in the Grant Fund were used solely in relation to
the debt incurred from that construction and were not “subverted to
private purposes.” Borgelt, 692 S.W.3d at 310. The Gander Mountain
facility was built and operated for more than a decade, anchoring a
shopping district that apparently has generated and continues to
generate jobs, commerce, and additional tax revenue. That the original
tenant later closed does not erase the consideration the governments
received. And although the record on this point is somewhat murky, it
suggests that the sales-tax contributions owed by the City and County
would have continued in roughly the same amounts (around $150,000
per quarter) even after Gander Mountain closed—indicating that new
development spurred by public investment had, over time, begun
contributing to sales-tax revenue. This is in line with an uncontroverted
affidavit stating that “Gander Mountain contributed to the success of
the center for more than a decade,” such that “Corsicana Crossing may
not have materialized without Gander Mountain.” Finally, no one
disputes that the former Gander Mountain facility is now occupied by
another large retailer, Fun Town RV.

33
Although the record is not entirely clear on the point, construction
of the Gander Mountain facility seems largely to have achieved its
intended purpose by attracting additional tenants and substantially
increasing economic activity and sales-tax revenue in the shopping
district. If true, this public benefit was easily sufficient consideration
for Gift Clause purposes. By declaring that the “development and
diversification of the economy” is a valid public purpose, the people of
Texas took the view that fostering private enterprise can, when properly
structured, generate real public value in return. That declaration would
ring hollow if courts assessing the constitutionality of such programs
were to disregard or restrictively construe the economic benefits such
programs yield. The people of Texas decided, in amending their
constitution, that public expenditures for economic development serve a
genuine public purpose. To the extent there is lingering judicial
skepticism of the wisdom of the people’s judgment in that regard, it must
play no role in the courts’ approach to these questions.
Thus, even though economic-development programs remain
subject to the Gift Clauses’ other requirements, courts should resist
reading those safeguards so broadly that they prohibit the very core of
the activity section 52-a was adopted to permit. The Gift Clauses still
serve their essential role—to prevent gratuities and ensure
accountability—but they ought not be stretched so far as to prohibit
what the people themselves have declared to be a public purpose. On
the record before us, the evidence suggests that the governments’
investment produced the very kind of public benefit section 52-a was
designed to achieve.

34
IV.

For these reasons, summary judgment for the City and County
was improper. The courts below erred in concluding that the closure of
a particular store extinguished the constitutional purpose supporting
the economic-development agreements and in holding the agreements
unconstitutional on that basis.
The viability of the local governments’ Gift Clause claims largely
hinges on their effort to narrowly define the deal’s public purpose as the
continued operation of the Gander Mountain store. That theory having
failed, it appears based on the available record that neither section 52-a
nor the Gift Clauses prohibits the City or County from honoring its
agreement to continue making payments under the deal it struck, which
apparently has generated and continues to generate economic
development in the local area.
While the materials before us support this conclusion, the record
remains unclear and underdeveloped as to various matters, including
the development of new businesses in the shopping district over the
years, as well as alleged construction defects or other irregularities in
the project’s execution that have been alleged by the City and County.
Those and potentially other factual questions may, if necessary, be
further explored on remand, which is the disposition requested by
Chase.
The judgment of the court of appeals is reversed, and the case is
remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.

35
James D. Blacklock
Chief Justice

OPINION DELIVERED: May 8, 2026

36

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/11323658. Public record. Not legal advice.