Ex Parte Travis and Mathews

73 S.W.2d 487, 123 Tex. 480, 1934 Tex. LEXIS 222
CourtTexas Supreme Court
DecidedJune 8, 1934
DocketNo. 6733.
StatusPublished
Cited by43 cases

This text of 73 S.W.2d 487 (Ex Parte Travis and Mathews) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Texas Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ex Parte Travis and Mathews, 73 S.W.2d 487, 123 Tex. 480, 1934 Tex. LEXIS 222 (Tex. 1934).

Opinion

Mr. Justice GEEENWOOD

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The relators M. M. Travis and Harry Matthews seek, by *482 habeas corpus, a judgment of the Supreme Court discharging them from the custody of the Sheriff of Gregg County, Texas, who holds them under an order of the 124th District Court of Gregg County, convicting relators of contempt, and sentencing them to confinement in the county, jail of Gregg County for twenty-four hours, and fining them $100.00 and taxing against them the costs of the contempt proceedings.

As stated in relator’s petition, the District Court adjudged them in contempt for having, as agents of the Southport Petroleum Company, violated a temporary injunction granted on March 22, 1934, by written fiat of the district judge duly endorsed on the petition that day filed, in a suit brought against the Southport Petroleum Company by the State of Texas, such temporary injunction restraining the Company and relators as its agents from transporting and handling crude petroleum without compliance with an order of the Railroad Commission of Texas, of date February 15, 1933; and also restraining the Company and its agents from handling, refining and processing crude oil without compliance with an order of the Commission of date September 29, 1933, as re-adopted on March 12, 1934.

The alleged acts of contempt were charged by the State’s motion filed on April 5, 1934, to have been committed on April. 1st, April 2nd, and April 3rd, 1934. Relators admitted on the hearing in this Court that appeal from the temporary injunction was duly perfected to the Court of Civil Appeals at Texarkana, and that the appeal was still pending in that Court.

The motion to punish relators was heard on April 27, 1934, by the District Court, and the judgment of that Court declaring relators guilty and ordering their punishment was rendered on April 27, 1934. Thereafter, petition of habeas corpus was presented to the Supreme Court.

The ground urged for discharge of the relators by this Court is the absence of evidence before the District Judge and the District Court showing that relators violated any valid order of the Commission or provision of the temporary injunction.

The statute under which the appeal was taken by the Southport Petroleum Company provides that any party to any suit “wherein a temporary injunction may be granted * * * may appeal from such order or judgment to the Court of Civil Appeals by filing a transcript of such case with the clerk of said appellate court not later than 20 days after-the entry of record of such order or judgment.” (Italics ours.) Art. 4662, Volume 14, Vernon’s Ann. Texas Civil Statutes, page 117.

*483 Construing the same language in an earlier statute, the Supreme Court in Chief Justice Brown’s opinion in Baumberger v. Allen, 101 Texas, at page 357, said: “We think that the

filing of the petition with the order endorsed thereon constitutes the ‘entry of record of such order.’ ” The same construction is given the statute in Ex parte Rains, 113 Texas, 433, opinion by Chief Justice Cureton.

It necessarily follows under the admission of relators, that before the District Court tried the relators for contempt, April 27, 1934, the appeal from the temporary injunction had been perfected by the filing of transcript not later than April 11th, that being the twentieth day after March 22nd.

The relators have presented to this Court the brief in the Court of Civil Appeals showing that the sole ground for the appeal there pending is that, “The district court was without authority to issue said injunction, and we desire to discuss the question of the validity of the injunction because of his lack of authority.” The propositions urged for vacation of the temporary injunction sustain the above statement.

The motion of the State to punish for contempt in the district court was based entirely on averments of violations of the temporary injunction. The answer by relators to the motion raises the same questions as those on which the appeal is prosecuted, the first section of this answer reading: “First. That said Injunction is in all things void for the reason that the facts alleged in the Plaintiff’s petition are insufficient and do not warrant the issuance of said Injunction; that the Court was without power and authority to issue said Injunction.”

It thus appears that the district court undertook to have a trial to determine the validity of its injunction, on motion for contempt, after the jurisdiction of the Court of Civil Appeals had fully attached for the determination of that precise question.

The general rule applies here, which is stated in 3 Texas Jurisprudence, at page 369, in section 262, in the following words: “As a general rule the perfection of an appeal or writ of error terminates the authority of the lower court pending the appeal, in respect of all matters which trench upon the appellate functions, so that the lower court may not thereafter proceed in the cause, at least as to the subject matter of the appeal or writ" (Italics ours.) If this were not true, a Court of Civil Appeals would be powerless to enforce its own jurisdiction. Yet, a valid statute expressly declares, referring to Courts of Civil Appeals, that “said' courts and the judges *484 thereof may issue writs of mandamus and all other writs necessary to enforce the jurisdiction of said courts.” Article 1823, Vernon’s Ann. Texas Statutes.

There must be an end to orderly administration of justice if at the same time two separate courts entertaining different views could exercise the power to adjudicate the same question. The Texarkana Court of Civil Appeals correctly announced more than a quarter of a century ago that:

“After the appeal is thus perfected (i. e. by notice and cost bond), then the trial court loses its power in respect to those-things %ohich might trench on the appellate functions, and the jurisdiction of the Court of Civil Appeals attaches.” (Italics ours.) Gordon v. Rhodes & Daniels, 104 S. W., 786.

After the jurisdiction of the Appellate Court attached, it alone was clothed with the power to adjudicate the validity or invalidity of the temporary injunction and to exercise the discretion involved in compelling obedience to the injunction pending the appeal, as well as to enforce its own final judgment, unless or until such judgment was subjected to review by a higher court. The district court could exercise no such authority while power to consider and determine these very matters lay exclusively in a higher court. Churchill v. Martin, 65 Texas, 367, 369; Wells v. Littlefield, 62 Texas, 30; Ford v. State, 209 S. W., 491; Hurley v. Buchanan, 233 S. W., 590.

As declared in Texas Jurisprudence: “Habeas corpus is a collateral, not a direct attack on the proceedings under which the restraint complained of has been imposed.” * * * “Habeas corpus is an extraordinary writ. The general rule is that it does not lie when relief may be had or could have been procured by resort to another remedy.” 21 Texas Jurisprudence, pp. 424, 425, 426. Ex parte Lipscomb, 111 Texas, 415, 416, 239 S.

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Bluebook (online)
73 S.W.2d 487, 123 Tex. 480, 1934 Tex. LEXIS 222, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-travis-and-mathews-tex-1934.