Janelli v. Bond

225 S.W.2d 824, 148 Tex. 416, 1950 Tex. LEXIS 475
CourtTexas Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 4, 1950
DocketA-2343
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 225 S.W.2d 824 (Janelli v. Bond) 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
Janelli v. Bond, 225 S.W.2d 824, 148 Tex. 416, 1950 Tex. LEXIS 475 (Tex. 1950).

Opinion

*418 Mr. Justice Garwood

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is an original mandamus proceeding by relator, Samuel John Janelli, to compel the Court of Civil Appeals for the Fifth District to certify to this court two questions in a cause in which the plaintiff below and a respondent here, whose name or alleged name is Mrs. Lu Ella Janelli, sued relator for divorce and a division of property, asserting as one of her essential allegations that she was relator’s wife by virture of a ceremonial marriage. Pursuant to the prayer in the petition, and without notice to relator, the trial court granted an order under Article 4635 of Title 75, Vernon’s Annotated Civil Statutes, requiring relator to furnish an inventory and appraisement of property in his possession and, as authorized by the same statute, a temporary restraining order against disposition of his property. Relator answered, denying existence of a marriage with Mrs. Janelli. He also moved to rescind the order for inventory and appraisement. Upon an extended hearing of this latter motion and Mrs. Janelli’s motion to convert the restraining order into a temporary injunction, the marriage issue was the, and evidently the only, issue made. There was apparently an abundance of persuasive evidence against existence of the alleged marriage and little evidence to the contrary except Mrs. Janelli’s assertion that the ceremony had occurred at a certain time and place. The trial court, while disclaiming to rule finally on the issue, apparently found there was some evidence of a marriage and for this reason entered a decree granting the temporary injunction and continuing in effect the order for an inventory and appraisement. From this decree relator appealed to the Court of Civil Appeals for the Fifth District which — over the dissent of Associate Justice Young — held in effect that because of the overwhelming evidence against the alleged marriage, the interlocutory decree appealed from was not one issued in a divorce proceeding under Article 4635, supra, as to which no appeal is expressly provided, but was necessarily one granted under the provisions of Title 76 of the statutes (relating to injunctions generally) and therefore appealable under its Article 4662 which provides for appeals from temporary injunctions granted “under any provision of this Title.” The court therefore took jurisdiction of the appeal, reversing the case and remanding it with instructions to set aside the orders in question and, in the event the evidence on the marriage issue should on further hearing not be materially different from that already presented, to dismiss plaintiff’s suit. 216 S. W. (2d) 587. Mrs. Janelli’s application for writ of error was dismissed for want of jurisdiction upon the theory that the case was one of divorce. (147 Texas 662). Thereafter, as Mrs. Janelli still had pending in the Court of Civil Appeals *419 a motion to certify questions to this court, the former reconsidered the case and, the membership of the court having meanwhile changed, reached a contrary result, with Chief Justice Bond dissenting. The majority opinion, while stating that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting the decree in view of all the evidence, proceeded, under authority of Beckler v. Beckler, Tex. Civ. App., 114 S. W. (2d) 618, to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the decree was not appealable, because issued under Title 75, supra, rather than under Title 76. 220 S. W. (2d) 255. Relator’s ensuing application to this court for writ of error, like the earlier one of Mrs. Janelli, was dismissed (147 Texas 662) on the theory that the case was one of divorce, and his motions in the Court of Civil Appeals to certify questions to this court were in due course overruled. The present mandamus proceeding followed, and, in the light of the dissent below, we granted leave to file and argue the petition. Rule 463, T. R. C. P.; Simpson v. McDonald, 142 Texas 444, 179 S. W. (2d) 239.

The questions sought to be certified are:

“(1) Is a suit denominated one for divorce and division of property, one of property rights only, where the evidence on preliminary hearing discloses no marriage; and
“(2) Is a Plaintiff who has plead a marriage and failed to prove it (where denied) entitled to interlocutory orders of temporary injunction and requiring the filing of an inventory.”

An intelligent application of the equitable principles underlying the remedy of mandamus to a case like the present requires us to consider various matters aside from the answers to the questions sought to be certified and including the correctness or incorrectness of the holding below. Simpson v. McDonald, supra. It is plain that the point of dissent below was whether the court had jurisdiction of the appeal. Both the majority and dissenting opinions below appear to have proceeded on the major premise that the Court of Civil Appeals’ decision in Beckler v. Beckler, supra, was correct in holding that a temporary injunction like that here involved was not appealable if the case is one of divorce. The majority view seems to be that if on the evidence — as reviewed and considered by the appellate court— the trial court did not act arbitrarily in treating the case as one of divorce, then the appellate court should treat it as one of divorce and dismiss the appeal. The dissent apparently asserts the right of the appellate court, for purposes of determining its jurisdiction of the appeal, to examine the evidence without *420 reference to the trial court’s conclusions therefrom and, if it finds no evidence supporting the allegation of marriage, to accept jurisdiction as it would in a dispute between strangers over property rig'hts and accordingly to reverse the trial court order as without support in the evidence or for such other cause as might appear.

In our own view, the decree in question — aside from the part concerning the inventory and appraisement — was appealable regardless of whether the evidence should be taken as indicating a true divorce proceeding or something different, because temporary injunctions granted or refused under Article 4635, supra, are appealable like any other.

The provision of article 4662 that the temporary injunction appealed from shall be one granted “under any provision of this title” (76) must be considered in the light of other provisions of the same title. The very first of these — article 4642 — purportedly grants to courts the power to issue injunctions generally and specifies the grounds therefor. Presumably any injunction authorized by that article is one granted under the “provisions of this title” quite as much as one granted under one of the subsequent articles of the same title, which are grouped under the heading “In Particular Cases” and obviously deal with only a few of the many instances in which injunctive relief would be appropriate. Paragraph 3 of article 4642 expressly permits injunctions “where the applicant shows himself entitled thereto under the principles of equity, and the provisions of the statutes of this State relating to the granting of

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Bluebook (online)
225 S.W.2d 824, 148 Tex. 416, 1950 Tex. LEXIS 475, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/janelli-v-bond-tex-1950.