Beaudry v. Farmers Ins. Exch.
Annotate this CasePlaintiff and the corporate Defendants freely negotiated and entered into a clear and unambiguous contract for Plaintiff to sell their insurance policies. In the contract, Plaintiff consented to a provision allowing Defendants to immediately terminate the contract if he breached it in any one of five different specified ways. Plaintiff breached the contract, and Defendants exercised their right to terminate. Plaintiff sued Defendants under numerous theories of liability for terminating the contract, including under the doctrine of prima facie tort, asserting that Defendants had nefarious reasons for terminating the contract. After review, the New Mexico Supreme Court held that when a contract is clear, unambiguous, and freely entered into, the public policy favoring freedom of contract precludes a cause of action for prima facie tort when the gravamen of the allegedly tortious action was the defendant’s exercise of a contractual right.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.