The Peevyhouses leased their farm to Garland Coal & Mining Co. for strip-mining and included specific contractual promises that the company would perform restorative and remedial work on the land after mining ended. Garland completed the mining but did not do the promised remedial work. The cost of performing the work was approximately $29,000, while the resulting increase in the land’s market value would have been only about $300. The Peevyhouses sued for damages for breach of the restoration provisions.
When a contract requires remedial work to land, and the cost of performance is grossly disproportionate to the increase in the land’s market value, is the proper measure of damages the cost of performance or the diminution in value?
Where the contract provision breached is merely incidental to the main purpose of the contract and the cost of performance is grossly disproportionate to the economic benefit obtained, damages are limited to the diminution in value rather than the cost of performance. Cost-of-performance damages remain appropriate when the contractual provision is a main object of the contract and not economically wasteful.
The court held that the Peevyhouses could recover only the diminution in value of their property, not the full cost of performing the restorative work. Because the promised work was incidental to the lease’s main purpose and the cost of completion far exceeded the increase in value, damages were limited to the difference in value.
The court treated the mining lease’s principal purpose as coal extraction, with the remedial promises viewed as subordinate or incidental. It relied on the general contract-damages principle that damages should compensate for actual loss, and that where completion cost is greatly disproportionate to the benefit to be obtained, diminution in value is the proper measure. Awarding the full cost of restoration here would, in the court’s view, produce unreasonable economic waste because the land’s market value would increase only minimally. Thus the court substituted market-value loss for literal enforcement of the promised performance.
Justice Irwin dissented, arguing that the restoration promises were expressly bargained for and should be enforced according to the parties’ agreement. He objected that limiting damages to diminution in value let the breaching party avoid a clear contractual obligation simply because performance became expensive.
Peevyhouse is a leading and controversial case on the expectation-damages choice between cost of completion and diminution in value, especially where performance would be economically wasteful. It is frequently contrasted with Jacob & Youngs, Inc. v. Kent, 230 N.Y. 239, 129 N.E. 889 (1921), which also limited recovery where completion would involve great economic waste, and with Groves v. John Wunder Co., 205 Minn. 163, 286 N.W. 235 (1939), which awarded cost-of-performance damages for failure to restore land. The case is often criticized for undervaluing noneconomic and subjective contractual interests in land restoration and is central in contracts courses discussing efficient breach, economic waste, and the limits of market-value damages.
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