Selling real estate owned by a church or other organization is rarely as simple as signing a contract. The entity has its own governance, its own approval requirements, and its own internal dynamics — and any one of those can turn a straightforward sale into a fight. When those internal issues collide with the technical requirements of a title commitment, the result can be years of litigation and, eventually, a court order forcing the sale at a price the seller agreed to more than a decade earlier.
The dispute often comes down to a single question: did the seller fail to convey title, or did the seller simply refuse to? That distinction sounds academic, but it controls what the buyer can recover. A seller who genuinely cannot deliver title may owe the buyer only a refund. A seller who can deliver but won’t can be forced to go through with the sale.
That is exactly what happened in Williams v. Bowers, No. 03-24-00089-CV (Tex. App.—Austin Feb. 27, 2026, no pet. h.). A San Antonio church and its pastor, Langston Williams, signed contracts to sell three Austin properties to a real-estate investor, Rex Bowers, in 2013. The properties never closed. Bowers spent the better part of a decade in court trying to enforce the deal. The case shows what a seller’s obligations under Schedule C of a title commitment really are, and what happens when a seller refuses to meet them.
Facts & Procedural History
Magnolia Christian Church, a San Antonio church, and its pastor, Langston Williams, owned three parcels along East 12th Street in Austin’s McKinley Heights neighborhood. They listed the properties in 2012. An Austin real-estate investor, Rex Bowers, made offers on all three, and in March 2013 the parties signed three form contracts for a total price of $434,500.
The three contracts were tied together — each closing depended on the other two closing. Four provisions mattered. Paragraph 6A required the sellers to furnish Bowers an owner’s title insurance policy. Paragraph 6D set out how Bowers could object to title defects and when the sellers had to cure them. Paragraph 9A set the closing date. And Paragraph 15 gave Bowers the right to “enforce specific performance” if the sellers failed to comply.
After the contracts were signed, the title company issued a commitment. Schedule C — the part of a title commitment listing what must be cleared before the company will issue a policy — flagged a pending but dormant lawsuit by a third party claiming an interest in the properties. Williams said the church had no money to hire a lawyer to get it dismissed. Before the parties could work it out, the trial court dismissed that lawsuit on its own, clearing the item.
The title company then issued a second commitment. This time Schedule C required a board resolution from the church authorizing Williams to sign on its behalf. The church’s board was three people: Williams, his wife, and his son. Even so, Williams said he could not get the resolution. The church and Williams then declared the contracts terminated and signed new contracts with a different buyer at a much higher price.
Bowers refused to accept the termination. The title company set several more closings. Bowers showed up to each one; the sellers did not. On July 26, 2016, Bowers appeared, signed all the closing documents, and delivered the full $434,500 — the escrow officer emailed Williams that the lender had delivered the funds. The church and Williams still did not appear.
Bowers sued for breach of contract in county court in August 2016, asking for specific performance. The sellers challenged the court’s jurisdiction. After a fight that ended with the county court suit being dismissed for lack of jurisdiction in September 2020, Bowers refiled in district court eight days later. The district court denied the sellers’ limitations defense, denied their plea to the jurisdiction, tried the case to the bench, and ruled for Bowers — awarding specific performance and attorney’s fees. The church and Williams appealed.
Specific Performance and the Seller’s Schedule C Duty
To understand this case, you first have to understand two things: why courts force the sale of real estate instead of just awarding money, and what a seller actually has to do under Schedule C of a title commitment.
Specific performance is an equitable remedy. Instead of making the breaching party pay damages, the court orders that party to actually do what the contract requires. In most contract disputes, money is the default. Real estate is different. Texas treats every piece of real property as unique, so money is presumed to be an inadequate substitute when a seller refuses to convey. That is why specific performance “is often granted where a valid contract to purchase real property is breached by the seller.” Scott v. Sebree, 986 S.W.2d 364 (Tex. App.—Austin 1999, pet. denied). The Texas Supreme Court reaffirmed that specific performance is an equitable remedy awarded in lieu of money damages in White Knight Development, LLC v. Simmons, 718 S.W.3d 203 (Tex. 2025).
That has a practical consequence: a buyer who elects specific performance does not also have to prove the dollar amount of his losses. The remedy takes the damages calculation off the table. The buyer does, however, have to show that he performed, tendered performance, and was ready, willing, and able to perform at all relevant times. And “ready, willing, and able” is measured against what the contract actually required — a buyer is not obligated to close on property with title defects the seller was supposed to clear.
That brings us to Schedule C. A title commitment — the document a title company issues before the policy — is divided into schedules. Schedule A identifies the property and the insured. Schedule B lists the standard exceptions and exclusions from coverage. Schedule C lists the specific requirements the title company needs cleared before it will issue the policy. Those requirements vary: payoff statements for existing liens, releases from prior lienholders, instruments establishing the chain of title, dismissal of lawsuits clouding title, and — for entities like corporations or churches — proof that the person signing has authority to sell.
A church is a legal entity and can only act through authorized representatives, so the title company has to confirm whoever signs the deed is actually authorized. That usually means a board resolution. Here, the church’s board was Williams, his wife, and his son — a resolution would have taken a family meeting. Williams still claimed he could not get it. The escrow officer, Carol Bellomy, testified that clearing all Schedule C items was the seller’s responsibility, and that the title company could not issue a policy until those items were cleared.
“Cannot” Versus “Will Not” Perform
The most important issue in the case is the line between a seller who is unable to convey title and one who refuses to take the steps to convey it. That line is over a century old, and it decides what the buyer can recover.
The church and Williams leaned on two old cases. In Dobson v. Zimmerman, 118 S.W. 236 (Tex. Civ. App. 1909, writ ref’d), the court held that a seller who had no title and could not make a good conveyance owed the buyer only the earnest money, absent fraud. Kelly v. Simon, 262 S.W. 202 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 1924, writ dism’d w.o.j.), said the same thing: absent fraud, the damages for breach of a contract to convey real estate “when the seller cannot make title” are the purchase money paid, with interest. The sellers argued that because there was no fraud finding, Bowers was limited to nominal damages.
The court did not buy it. Dobson and Kelly apply only when the seller is unable to make title. The church and Williams held title the entire time — they just refused to clear the Schedule C items that would have let the title company issue a policy and close the deal. Later cases had already narrowed the rule. In Ryan Mortgage Investors v. Fleming-Wood, 650 S.W.2d 928 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 1983, writ ref’d n.r.e.), the court explained that the buyer is limited to a return of the purchase price only where the seller “is unable to make title through no fault of his own.” If the seller disables himself or refuses to perform, the general contract remedies — including specific performance — still apply. The sellers here did not lack the power to close. They lacked the willingness.
The Paragraph 6A Title Insurance Obligation
The sellers made a clever argument about the scope of their title insurance duty. Paragraph 6A required them to furnish a policy “subject to” certain listed exclusions and exceptions. Lawsuits clouding title and incomplete ownership were not on that list. So, they argued, they had no obligation to address those items.
The court turned that argument on its head. The exclusions and exceptions are the items the policy would not cover. The fact that lawsuits and incomplete ownership were not listed means the opposite of what the sellers claimed — the policy had to cover those items. And for the policy to cover them, the title company had to clear them from Schedule C before issuing it. That makes sense: a policy that did not cover the known defects at closing would be nearly worthless to the buyer.
Paragraph 6D backed this up. It addressed the buyer’s right to object to title defects, but carved out one thing: “the requirements in Schedule C of the Commitment are not waived by Buyer.” In other words, Schedule C requirements survived no matter what — Bowers did not have to object to them, because they could not be waived in the first place.
Did the Contracts Terminate on Their Own?
The sellers also argued the contracts had already terminated by their own terms. Their theory rested on Paragraph 6D, which says that if the seller does not timely cure the buyer’s objections within fifteen days, the contract terminates — unless curing would cost the seller money, in which case the seller has no duty to cure. Because clearing some Schedule C items meant hiring a lawyer, the sellers argued they had no duty to clear them and the contracts terminated.
The court drew a clean line. The duty to clear Schedule C items did not come from any duty to cure the buyer’s objections under Paragraph 6D. It came from the separate duty to furnish a title policy under Paragraph 6A. Bowers never objected to the Schedule C items, and he did not need to — Paragraph 6D says those requirements are not waived by the buyer. The “objections” came from the title company, not Bowers, and Paragraph 6D simply did not address that. A seller cannot use the termination clause of an objections provision to dodge the independent obligation to deliver title insurance. The two duties are separate, and failing the Paragraph 6A duty was a breach, not a valid termination.
The Texas Savings Statute and the “Intentional Disregard” Exception
The other major issue was limitations. The deadline to sue for specific performance of a contract for the conveyance of real property is four years under Section 16.004(a)(1) of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. The sellers argued Bowers’s claim accrued in March 2013, that he did not file in a court of proper jurisdiction until September 2020 — more than seven years later — and that the claim was time-barred.
Bowers pointed to the Texas Savings Statute, Section 16.064 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. It suspends the limitations period when a suit is filed in a court that lacks jurisdiction and then refiled in a proper court within sixty days of the dismissal. Bowers had filed in county court in August 2016 — within four years — the appeals court dismissed that suit for lack of jurisdiction in September 2020, and he refiled in district court eight days later. On its face, the statute tolled limitations.
The sellers invoked the statute’s exception: it does not apply when the adverse party shows the first filing was made “with intentional disregard of proper jurisdiction.” Once a defendant raises that, the plaintiff has to show he did not intentionally disregard jurisdiction when he filed in the first court.
The Texas Supreme Court set the standard in In re United Services Automobile Association, 307 S.W.3d 299 (Tex. 2010). The “intentional disregard” standard is like the standard for setting aside a default judgment — a low bar. Some excuse, even a poor one, is enough to show the filing was not made with intentional disregard. As the court put it, the savings statute exists precisely because “capable lawyers” often make “good faith” mistakes about the jurisdiction of Texas courts. It protects honest mistakes; it does not protect a strategic decision to file in a court that has no power to hear the case.
Bowers’s lawyer filed an affidavit saying he believed the county court had jurisdiction to award specific performance, and therefore had jurisdiction over the breach claim — in short, that he made a mistake of law. The sellers offered nothing to contradict it. The court also noted that two county court judges and one justice of the appeals court had agreed that county court jurisdiction was proper. That split among judges showed the jurisdictional question was genuinely uncertain — not a case of willful misfiling. The court held Bowers met his burden, the savings statute tolled limitations, and the claim was timely.
The Takeaway
Williams is worth knowing for anyone on either side of a Texas real estate deal. When a seller holds title but refuses to clear Schedule C so a title policy can issue, the seller is not “unable” to perform in the legal sense — and that matters. A seller who truly lacks title may owe the buyer only a refund of earnest money, but a seller who simply will not perform can be forced to close and faces the full range of contract remedies. If you are buying, that is your protection; if you are selling, dragging your feet on Schedule C is not a way out of the deal. The case also confirms that specific performance of a real estate contract in Texas does not require proof of money damages — inadequacy is presumed, and the remedy is available where the seller breaches. And the savings-statute ruling is a reminder that a buyer who files in the wrong court by honest mistake, especially where reasonable lawyers and judges disagree about jurisdiction, does not lose the case to a technical limitations defense. If you are dealing with a stalled closing, a title commitment you cannot clear, or a seller who simply walked away, get advice before deadlines start running against you.
We are Corpus Christi probate attorneys. We help clients work through the probate process. Call today for a free confidential consultation, (361) 502-4240.
Our Corpus Christi Probate Attorneys provide a full range of probate services to our clients, including helping with real property sales, title disputes, and specific performance issues in estate and probate matters. Affordable rates, fixed fees, and payment plans are available. We provide step-by-step instructions, guidance, checklists, and more for completing the probate process. We have years of combined experience we can use to support and guide you with probate and estate matters. Call us today for a FREE attorney consultation.
Disclaimer
The content of this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information presented may not apply to your situation and should not be acted upon without consulting a qualified probate attorney. We encourage you to seek the advice of a competent attorney with any legal questions you may have.
