Hinkle v. Copeland

294 S.W. 702, 1927 Tex. App. LEXIS 300
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 19, 1927
DocketNo. 11731.
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 294 S.W. 702 (Hinkle v. Copeland) 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
Hinkle v. Copeland, 294 S.W. 702, 1927 Tex. App. LEXIS 300 (Tex. Ct. App. 1927).

Opinion

CONNER, C. J.

This is an appeal from an order of the county .court of Clay County overruling a motion in behalf of I. B. Hinkle and Mrs. C. B. Jackson, administratrix of the estate of C. B. Jackson, deceased, to set aside a judgment in favor of Jumbo Copeland entered at the February term, 1926, against appellants for $200, costs of suit, etc. The judgment is designated by appellants .as a judgment by default, and the prayer is that the judgment shall be set aside and a new trial granted. The judgment referred to is in regular form and purports to have been entered on the 8th day of April, 1922. As disclosed by the record, np appeal was ever prosecuted, and the evidence upon which it is founded is not before us.

In the motion to set the judgment aside, it is alleged, in substance, that at the time of its rendition the case" of Jumbo Copeland against appellants was one of ten similar eases that had been tried in a justice court and rendered in favor of appellants, and by the several plaintiffs appealed to the county court. That among the cases so appealed was the case of one A. G. Atnip v. I. B. Hinkle and C. B. Jackson, which was tried and judgment again rendered in favor of appellants ; that from said judgment of the county court last referred to, an appeal was duly prosecuted by A. G. Atnip to this court (258 S. W. 869); that in all of the cases referred to the same counsel represented the several plaintiffs and that an opposing counsel represented appellants; that during the trial of the Atnip Case it was agreed between the several counsel in open court that all the cases, other than that of Atnip, against appellant should be passed without trial and abide by the determination of the case of Atnip against appellants.

It is further alleged that on January 25, 1924, th^s court entered its judgment reversing the judgment of the county court against Atnip and remanding the cause for a new trial; that neither party has ever caused the issuance of the mandate of this court returnable to the county court as provided by law. It was further alleged that the remaining nine suits remained on the docket of the county court, and that the judge of said. court, being “disqualified,” on February 5, 1926, without any notice to defendants, “wired his disqualification to the Governor.”

Appellants in the present appeal based their prayer for a reversal of the order of the court overruling their motion to set aside the judgment of the county court, rendered *703 in appellee’s favor, on three propositions, to wit: (1) The agreement of counsel in the Atnip Case that the remaining nine suits referred to should not he tried until the mandate and judgment of this court should be returned to the county court, and that said remaining nine cases should abide and be governed by the judgment and mandate in the Atnip Case. (2) That no notice by wire or certificate of disqualification of the county judge was certified to the Governor, as required by law, and defendants had no notice of the application and appointment by the Governor of Hon. Donley Suddath, who tried the case. (3) That the pleadings and transcript from the justice court from which this cause was appealed were lost and not substituted and there was nothing in the minutes to show that the trial judge had qualified, and the court was without authority to render judgment by default.

We will dispose of these propositions in the reverse order of their presentation. We only have before us a statement of the evidence submitted at the hearing of the motion to set aside the judgment and for a new trial. The testimony relating to the alleged failure to file transcripts from the justice court is that of Hon. Vincent Stine, representing appellants in all of the ten cases at the time of the rendition of the judgment in favor of Atnip. He testified that:

“The papers (referring to the papers in the suits in the justice court) were here in two cases and gone in two cases. The transcript of the justice court was there, as I remember it, in two cases; as to all of the papers being there I could not say. Transcript from the justice court in two of the cases were not here, and I proved that the same reached here by the county judge, and I think I proved by the clerk that they came up.”

The testimony quoted, and we find no other, certainly seems insufficient to establish the proposition that the transcript from the justice court in the ease of appellee against appellants never reached the county court. The special judge proceeded to try the case, and nothing in the face of the judgment rendered or upon the record presented to us shows that the transcript from the justice court in appellee’s case was not before the county court, and we think we must presume in aid of the judgment that such transcript was present, and the county court’s appellate jurisdiction thus brought into effect.

The second proposition above noted,' to the effect that the special judge who tried the case had not been properly appointed, is not based upon any ground presented in the motion for new trial, and hence not available in this court, in addition to which the record before us shows both a certificate and telegram of the disqualification by Hon. J. P. Williams, the duly elected and qualified county judge of Clay county, directed to the Governor, in answer to which the Governor on the 6th day of February, 1926, duly issued her certificate, reciting that the county judge had made known to her “in the manner prescribed by law” that he was disqualified in the case, among others, of Copeland against appellants, and that “having full confidence in the integrity and ability of Donley Suddath of Clay county, do, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of this state, hereby appoint the said Donley Suddath, he being a person learned in the law, special judge to try and determine the above cause,” etc.

The fact that- appellants were without notice of the issuance of the certificate and telegram of disqualification on the part of the county judge is without force, we think, in view of articles 1931 and 1933 of the Statutes of 1925, and of the evidence relating to the disposition of appellants’ first proposition, to which we shall now address ourselves.

The agreement upon which appellants’ first proposition is based does not appear to have been in writing. Judge Stine testified:

“The agreement, as I remember it, was that we should try this one case on the questions of law presented by the demurrers and exceptions, and that the other eases were not to be tried at all until these questions of law were settled, inasmuch as the same questions of law, in our opinion, were involved in the other cases, and that the court had found that it would have necessitated an appeal in all cases.”

Mr. C. O. Taylor, who at all times represented the plaintiffs in the eases referred to, testified that:

“My remembrance of the agreement is this’, that after the jury had been selected in the At-nip Case and was in the box Judge Stine, who represented the defendants, demurred to our cause of action, and that pending the argument on the demurrer I proposed to Judge Stine that, after the court overruled the demurrer, we try the Atnip Case, and let the result control in the other cases. My remembrance is that Judge Stine said he could not do this, and that I then said that it would take us a week to try them, and he then said that he could not do that.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
294 S.W. 702, 1927 Tex. App. LEXIS 300, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hinkle-v-copeland-texapp-1927.