Fuentes v. Union de Pasteurizadores de Juarez Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable

527 S.W.3d 492, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 5850, 2017 WL 2705528
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 23, 2017
DocketNo. 08-16-00155-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 527 S.W.3d 492 (Fuentes v. Union de Pasteurizadores de Juarez Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fuentes v. Union de Pasteurizadores de Juarez Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, 527 S.W.3d 492, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 5850, 2017 WL 2705528 (Tex. Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

OPINION

YVONNE T. RODRIGUEZ, Justice

In this accelerated appeal, Appellants Jorge Zaragosa Fuentes, Rodrigo Mendoza Delagado; and Jose Chaparro Amparan ask this Court to dissolve a temporary injunction requiring them to turn over certain financial documents allegedly located in El Paso, Texas, to Union de Pasteuriza-dores de Juarez (UPJ), a Mexican corporation, pending trial on a conversion claim brought by UPJ.

We will affirm the trial court’s temporary injunction order.

BACKGROUND

Factual History

This battle for documents arises out of a larger dispute between two brothers, both of whom seek to control UPJ, a dairy in Mexico that at one time operated plants in the cities of Mexicali and Guadalajara. Pedro Zaragosa is president of UPJ; his brother Jorge Zaragosa is a shareholder.1 The Zaragosa Brothers shared interests in many joint business ventures together, but after an apparent falling out, the brothers in 2009 entered into negotiations in an attempt to divide their assets. UPJ is one of the assets at issue in this overarching corporate divorce.

UPJ maintains that by Mexican law, the company was required to keep its corporate records at its plant in Mexicali. UPJ alleges that in November 2012, shareholding brother Jorge Zaragosa unlawfully took control of the Mexicali plant. Thereafter, in November 2012 and November 2013, UPJ accountant Oscar Holguin Rojas, who was responsible for checking UPJ’s accounting on a monthly and annual basis, attempted to enter the Mexicali plant to retrieve financial records. He was denied entry both times. In 2013, UPJ’s Guadalajara plant ceased operations.

In April 2015, the Servicio de Adminis-tración Tribuatria (SAT)—the Mexican equivalent of the United States Internal Revenue Service—ordered an audit of UPJ’s finances from fiscal year 2013. UPJ alleges that the relevant financial documents needed to comply with the SAT audit had been located in the Mexicali plant, but subsequently went missing. In December 2015, UPJ obtained a search warrant to enter the Mexicali plant in search of its financial records. No records were found.

On January 12, 2016, UPJ accountant Holguin met with Jorge Zaragosa, his associates Chaparro and Mendoza, and others in El Paso, Texas, to discuss the records. All parties agree that Appellants did not produce the records at that meeting. As discussed in further detail below, the parties diverge on the issue of whether [497]*497Appellants admitted to holding the documents in El Paso at the meeting.

Procedural History

On April 7, 2016, UPJ brought a conversion action and a temporary restraining order against Appellants in the 41st District Court of El Paso County, Texas. Thereafter, UPJ filed an application for a temporary injunction. At the injunction hearing, Mendoza and Chaparro both testified that they did not have the documents, and they denied ever stating to Holguin at the January meeting that they had the documents. Chaparro admitted that he understood which documents were at issue based on the petition filed by UPJ, but he continued to deny possessing any documents. On rebuttal, accountant Holguin testified that Appellants told him that they were in possession of the documents. Hol-guin further testified that he made a recording of that meeting on his cell phone. In excerpts Holguin played during the hearing, a man Holguin identified as Mendoza acknowledged having possession of the documents and appeared to suggest that the documents would be returned in exchange for Pedro Zaragosa relinquishing control of UPJ.

At the end of the hearing, the trial court orally stated that it found the testimony of UPJ’s witnesses to be credible and the testimony of Appellants’ witnesses not to be credible. The trial court then issued an injunction order, which stated in relevant part:

ACCORDINGLY, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED as follows:

1. That' Defendants Jorge Zaragosa, Rodrigo Mendoza and Jose Luis Chaparro and their agents, servants, representatives, employees, and all those working in concert with them are hereby enjoined from altering, destroying, modifying, hiding, withholding or otherwise failing to produce forthwith all business records of Plaintiff and Defendants are hereby enjoined from denying Plaintiff and its agents, employees, and/or contractors from having immediate possession of, and unfettered access to all data, information and records, constituting the business records of the Plaintiff, and the Court hereby mandates that Defendants immediately (not less than 48 hours from the date and time of received service or actual notice of this order) surrender to Plaintiff all records described and listed on the attachment to this Order, which is incorporated by reference for all purposes at Exhibit ‘A.’
This Order shall be effective upon the filing of a bond in the amount of $2,000.00 payable to the the [sic] Defendant, or the deposit of cash or equivalent in the same amount to be held in the funds registry of the District Clerk.

The trial court accepted a $2,000 cash deposit in lieu of an executable bond instrument. This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

On appeal, Jorge Zaragosa, Mendoza, and Chaparro urge us to reverse the trial court’s temporary injunction order for six reasons. In Issue One, Appellants maintain that UPJ cannot establish a probable right of recovery because the company’s cause of action for conversion would be barred by the statute of limitations at trial. In Issue Two, Appellants assert that UPJ failed to establish the irreparable injury element necessary to obtain an injunction because the company could be adequately compensated after trial with money damages, rendering equitable relief inappropriate. In Issues Three and Pour, Appellants [498]*498argue that UPJ’s claims for damages are speculative and the trial court’s fact-findings underpinning the injunction are con-clusory. In Issue Five, Appellants contend that the injunction order fails to comply ■with Tex.R.CivP. 683’s specificity requirement because the order is confusingly worded and subject to more than one interpretation. In Issue Six, Appellants request that we find the injunction order is void because the bond UPJ tendered was ineffective.

None of Appellants’ points warrant reversal.

Standard of Review and Applicable Law

A temporary injunction is an ex-. traordinary equitable remedy whose purpose is to “preserve the status quo of the litigation’s subject matter pending a trial on the merits.” Butnaru v. Ford Motor Co., 84 S.W.3d 198, 204 (Tex. 2002). We review a trial court’s ruling on a temporary injunction for abuse of discretion. Frequent Flyer Depot, Inc. v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 281 S.W.3d 215, 220 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2009, pet. denied). Under this standard, we will not reverse the trial court unless it acted arbitrarily and unreasonably without reference to guiding rules or principles, or unless the trial court misapplied the law. Bay Fin. Sav. Bank, FSB v. Brown, 142 S.W.3d 586, 589-90 (Tex.App.—Texarkana 2004, no pet.).

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Nidal T. Baem v. Western Frontier Trading, LLC.
Tex. App. Ct., 8th Dist. (El Paso), 2026
WCJ Assets, LTD. v. US Trinity Bridgeport, LLC
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2025
Pebble Hills Plaza Limited v. ASLM LTD.
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2024
in the Estate of Rene Huron
Court of Appeals of Texas, 2023

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
527 S.W.3d 492, 2017 Tex. App. LEXIS 5850, 2017 WL 2705528, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/fuentes-v-union-de-pasteurizadores-de-juarez-sociedad-anonima-de-capital-texapp-2017.