## Facts

- James B. Harris, a professional football defensive halfback, signed a standard NFL player contract with the Los Angeles Rams for the 1958 season.
- The contract included (1) an option allowing the club to renew for an additional year and (2) language stating Harris’s services were “special, exceptional and unique,” with anticipated irreparable harm and injunctive relief for breach.
- Harris played the 1958 season; a dispute arose over whether the Rams effectively exercised the renewal option.
- Harris did not play professional football the next season, instead attending the University of Oklahoma and working as an assistant coach.
- In 1960, Harris signed to play with the Dallas Texans of the AFL.
- The Rams purported to exercise the option and assigned Harris’s contract to the Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Inc., an NFL team.
- The Cowboys sought only injunctive relief to restrain Harris from playing professional football (or related activities) for anyone except the Cowboys.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence so strongly showed Harris provided “special, exceptional and unique” services that the jury’s contrary finding required reversal and a new trial.
2. Whether the renewal option and a contractual tolling provision kept the contract enforceable despite Harris’s voluntary absence from professional football.
3. Whether the temporary injunction properly preserved the status quo and remained reviewable despite entry of a final judgment denying a permanent injunction.
4. Whether defenses attacking contract validity, including antitrust and public-policy arguments, barred injunctive enforcement.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the temporary injunction restraining Harris from playing professional football for any team other than the Cowboys pending final determination.
- The court reversed the take-nothing final judgment and remanded for a new trial, holding the jury’s finding that Harris lacked “special, exceptional and unique” skill was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence.
- The court held the renewal option was effectively exercised and that the contract term was tolled during Harris’s voluntary withdrawal from professional football.
- The court rejected Harris’s challenges to the contract’s validity, including antitrust-based arguments.

## Legal Principles

- A temporary injunction is proper when it preserves the status quo pending final determination and does not award all relief potentially available after a trial on the merits.
- In contracts for personal services, injunctive enforcement of a negative covenant may be available when the services are sufficiently special that legal damages are inadequate; “unique” does not require proof the employee is the single best or only one of his kind.
- An option-to-renew clause in a player contract may be enforceable when properly exercised, and contractual provisions may suspend (toll) the running of the term during a player’s voluntary nonperformance, preventing the player from running out the contract by temporarily leaving the sport.
- General policy and antitrust objections, without a sufficient legal basis to invalidate the agreement under governing law, do not bar enforcement of an otherwise valid personal-services contract through negative injunctive relief.

## Conclusion

The court upheld interim relief preventing a professional player from competing for a rival team while concluding the record strongly supported treating his services as special enough for equitable protection; it also recognized enforceability of renewal and tolling provisions, reversed the take-nothing judgment, and ordered a new trial on permanent injunctive relief.


Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Inc. v. Harris, 348 S.W.2d 37 (Tex. Civ. App.—Dallas 1961, writ ref’d n.r.e.)