## Facts

- Mission Independent School District hired Ethel Diserens as a music teacher for the 1944–1945 school year under a written contract.
- The contract contained an express negative covenant barring Diserens from teaching in any other Texas public school during the contract term.
- On the first day of the term, Diserens asked to be released from the contract; the district refused.
- Diserens declined to teach for Mission and accepted a music-teaching position with Cisco Independent School District for the same school year.
- Mission alleged Diserens’s musical and teaching abilities were special, unique, and extraordinary, making monetary damages an inadequate remedy.
- Mission sued for an injunction to prevent Diserens from teaching for Cisco (or any other Texas public school) during the contract term.

## Issues

1. Whether a court may enjoin breach of an express negative covenant in a personal-services contract, even though it will not specifically enforce the employee’s affirmative performance.
2. Whether the school district showed that Diserens’s services were sufficiently unique and that damages would be inadequate to justify injunctive relief.
3. Whether public policy or statutory limits on school districts prevent injunctive enforcement of a teacher’s exclusivity clause.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Texas reversed the trial court and the court of civil appeals.
- The court held that equity could enforce the contract’s negative covenant by injunction.
- The court ordered an injunction restraining Diserens from teaching in another Texas public school during the remaining term of her Mission contract.

## Legal Principles

- Courts will not compel specific performance of personal-services contracts, but may enjoin violation of an express negative covenant not to render similar services to others during the contract term.
- Injunctive enforcement of a negative covenant is proper when the employee’s services are special, unique, or extraordinary and legal remedies are inadequate.
- Difficulty in measuring the employer’s loss in money terms supports a finding that damages are inadequate.
- A public school district may invoke ordinary equitable remedies to protect its contractual rights when acting within its statutory authority to employ teachers.
- A negative injunction does not compel labor; the employee remains free not to work, but may be restrained from working in breach of an exclusivity promise.

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court held that a school district could obtain a negative injunction enforcing a teacher’s exclusivity clause when the teacher’s services were shown to be unique and damages would not adequately compensate the district, even though the court would not order the teacher to perform the contracted work.


Mission Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Diserens, 144 Tex. 107 (Tex. 1945)