Sue on it, embrace it

The original party to an oilfield-services agreement assigned its rights to Motis Energy. Motis sued on the agreement, lost, and sought to avoid the agreement’s attorneys-fee provision. The Fifth Circuit ruled against it: “Motis is a nonparty to the Agreement. But Motis embraced the Agreement by seeking to enforce its terms. Motis’s argument–that it did not embrace the entirety of the Agreement because it was assigned the right to Motis-DI’s claims, not the entire contract–lacks merit. When a plaintiff sues to enforce a contract to which it was not a party, the Supreme Court of Texas has held, as have we, that the plaintiff subjects itself to the entirety of the contract terms.” Motis Energy LLC v. SWN Prod. Co. LLC, No. 19-20495 (April 28, 2020) (unpublished) (emphasis added).