Denny v. Guyton

57 S.W.2d 415, 331 Mo. 1115, 1932 Mo. LEXIS 460
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedDecember 31, 1932
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 57 S.W.2d 415 (Denny v. Guyton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Denny v. Guyton, 57 S.W.2d 415, 331 Mo. 1115, 1932 Mo. LEXIS 460 (Mo. 1932).

Opinion

*1123 WHITE, J.

A second appeal. Suit was begun in the Circuit Court of Jackson County by Josiah C. Wolcott against J. D. Guyton, H. M. Beers and W. ■ R. Harrington, and the administrator of J. M. Grant. Wolcott dited before the trial and the suit progressed in the name of his executor. After" trial, while the ease was pending *1124 on appeal, J. D. Guyton and H. M. ¡Beers died and tbe cause was revived against tbe executors of eacb.

On tbe first trial there was a judgment for plaintiff which, on motion of defendants, was set aside and new trial granted. Tbe first appeal was from that order. On a bearing tbe first opinion of this court affirmed the judgment. After a motion for rehearing was filed this court ordered a reargument of tbe case. Defendants find occasion to assign error on account of that action.

Tbe reargument was followed by an opinion reversing the judgment and remanding with directions. [327 Mo. 1030, 40 S. W. (2d) 562.]

The issues are stated and the facts considered at length in the opinion there. It was alleged that Wolcott, Guyton, Beers, Harrington and Grant, being extensively engaged in the buying and selling of horses and mules at Kansas City, Missouri, and other places, conducted their enterprise through certain corporations in which they were stockholders, directors and officers; that the five men in September, 1914, for the convenient handling of the business of their several corporations entered into a verbal contract to engage in a joint adventure in the buying and selling of horses and mules to the British Government and other belligerent countries, and agreed that all the business conducted by two principal corporations, the Guy-ton & Harrington Mule Company and the Stock Yards Horse & Mule Company, by subsidiary corporations and by the individuals as partnerships under trade names in the United States and foreign countries should be included in the joint adventure and the profits divided between the five men in proportion to the ownership of stock by said parties in the Stock Yards Horse & Mule Company, approximately one-fourth each to Guyton and Harrington, and one-sixth each to Beers, Grant and Wolcott.

That the business conducted by the several parties and their corporations consisted of buying throughout the United States horses and mules and selling them mainly to the British Government during the World War; that in March 1916, Wolcott being in ill health sold and transferred to J. D. Guyton his interest in the business; that he was induced to make such sale by fraudulent representations and concealments made by defendants regarding the condition and profits of the business.

The suit is in equity to set aside that sale and transfer of Wol-cott’s interest and for an accounting on the part of defendants for the profits actually accrued to the parties in their joint adventure. The issues are set out specifically and in detail in the opinion reported. [327 Mo. 1030, 40 S. W. (2d) 565-6.] It was held that the findings of the trial court — that there was such joint adventure agreement as alleged and that Wolcott’s interest in the business was *1125 procured by fraudulent representations — were sustained by tbe weight of evidence, but that in the matter of accounting the evidence was unsatisfactory. The judgment was reversed and cause remanded with directions to take an accounting of the profits of the business only.

The case went to trial a second time in the circuit court on an amended petition upon which the first trial was had; the defendants filed a second amended answer which is of great length and largely argumentative, setting up additional defenses to the claim of joint adventure and the claim of fraud. These defenses whether or not tendering issues not available under the general denial upon which the ease was first tried are urged by defendants as proper claims upon our attention.

The trial court overruled the motion of the plaintiff to strike out the allegations of new matter in the amended answer and admitted the evidence upon it including all the evidence preserved in the abstracts of the record from the first trial. Afterwards, on plaintiff’s motion, the court struck out all that evidence except that relating to the accounting, refused to consider again the questions of joint adventure and fraud, took an accounting and rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff, found that at the conclusion of the joint adventure, February 21", 1918, the defendants owed the plaintiff $665,952.76 which, with interest at six per cent to the date of judgment June 2, 1932, amounted to $1,236,488.48 and adjudged that plaintiff recover that sum.

The plaintiff, asserting that the judgment should have been for more, appealed, Case No. 32,372, and the defendants, asserting that it should be less, if any, appealed, Case No. 32,373. The two appeals are consolidated in this court.

I. It is first claimed by defendants that this court had no authority to vacate the first opinion which affirmed the order of the trial court after the first trial granting a new trial. A motion for rehearing filed here was not overruled; the minutes of this court recite that a reargument was ordered because three of the judges concurring in the first opinion withdrew their concurrences. The argument now seems to imply that the proceeding was something unusual in the disposition of cases in this court. When the first opinion affirming the original judgment was handed down, the minutes show, one. judge was absent, one judge did not sit, leaving only five judges, including the writer of that opinion, concurring. The motion for rehearing filed by plaintiff apparently convinced three of the judges that the first opinion was wrong. But the three judges, a minority, could not sustain the motion for rehearing, and the two judges concurring in the original opinion could not overrule it. The *1126 three judges who bad come to believe the first opinion was erroneous were entirely within their rights in withdrawing their concurrences. That left the case open and under submission. It did not render this court impotent to act nor leave the case perpetually hung up pending a motion for rehearing which could not be acted upon. That justice might be done a reargument was ordered. There is nothing unusual in the procedure. When the case was reargued the personnel of the court had changed somewhat. The point is without merit.

II. Defendants argue that when the cause was remanded all of the issues before the trial court in the first trial and before this court on the first appeal were open for reexamination of the second trial: (1) the question of the existence of the alleged joint adventure; (2) the question of fraud in the procurement of Wolcott’s transfer of his interest; and (3) the question of accounting. The trial court concluded that it was limited to the accounting by the directions of the court in remanding the case. The conclusion of the court and the directions in the reversal, 327 Mo. 1030, 40 S. W. (2d) l. c. 591, were as follows:

"We see no occasion for a new trial on the issues of joint adventure agreement and fraud. It follows that the successor judge erred in sustaining defendants’ motion for a new trial of the whole cause.

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Bluebook (online)
57 S.W.2d 415, 331 Mo. 1115, 1932 Mo. LEXIS 460, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/denny-v-guyton-mo-1932.