Lester v. Gatewood

166 S.W. 389, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 679
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 11, 1914
DocketNo. 594.
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 166 S.W. 389 (Lester v. Gatewood) 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
Lester v. Gatewood, 166 S.W. 389, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 679 (Tex. Ct. App. 1914).

Opinion

HENDRICKS, J.

We quote from appellant’s brief as follows: “The appellant filed his suit in the district court of Randall county, Tex., in which he set up that the appellees were acting under and by virtue of a judgment of the district court of Deaf Smith county, which judgment was void by reason of the fact that it had been altered materially by the appellees, in vacation and without notice to the court or to the appellant.” He further alleged that “subsequent to the fraudulent alteration of said judgment by appellees, that some one of them with full knowledge that said judgment was void procured an abstract of same and placed it of record in Randall county, Tex., thus making same a lien on all the real estate owned by the appellant in the said county.”

Quoting from appellees’ brief, the petition of appellant in this cause exhibits: “That on the 6th day of May, 1910, W. W. Gatewood and Knight & Slaton recovered a judgment in the district court of Deaf Smith county against various parties defendant for various sums of money on certain promis *391 sory notes executed by such, persons, with foreclosure of a chattel mortgage lien on 600 head of steers. It is shown (in said petition) that the cattle had been sequestered by the plaintiffs in that suit (in Deaf Smith county) and replevied by one E. F. Brown, and the present suit grows out of an attack on that part of the judgment which has reference to the replevy bond” and rendered in that cause, as follows: “And it further appearing to the court that the defendant Fulton Brown, by name of E. F. Brown, had replevied the cattle seized under writ of sequestration issued in thé cause by giving a replevy bond conditioned as required by the statutes of Texas, with L. T. Lester and G. L. Abbott as sureties, and payable to W. W. Gatewood,- Wm. M. Knight, and John P. Slaton, plaintiffs, and it further appearing that said cattle have been by the jury in their verdict valued at $35 per head, it is therefore ordered, adjudged, and decreed by the court that the plaintiffs, W. W. Gate-wood and Wm. M. Knight, and John P. Slaton, do have and recover of and from the defendants E. F. Brown, L. T. Lester and G. L. Abbott, jointly and severally the sum of $-, being the amount of said replevy bond, for which execution may issue in favor of the respective plaintiffs to the amount of the several respective judgments.”

The petition for injunction presented to the district judge of Randall county also alleged the issuance of an execution upon the judgment rendered by the district court of Deaf Smith county, by virtue of which the sheriff of Lubbock county, Tex., was levying upon certain bank stock owned by appellant as a stockholder of a national bank in the town of Lubbock, also upon certain real estate situated in said city. The district judge of the Forty-Seventh judicial district, in which Randall county is situated, ordered a “temporary writ of injunction, * * * as prayed for, restraining the defendants * * * from proceeding further with the sale advertised, or from making further levies or doing anything further under the said execution or judgment until final hearing,” etc.

As stated by appellant in his brief: “Other allegations were made in the petition which it is not necessary to set out in order to arrive at the matters involved in this appeal” — the appellant abandoning, as we understand his brief, on account of his positions in this court, all other allegations stating additional grounds for injunction, except those directly germane, briefed, and assigned in this appeal. The district court sustained án exception to appellant’s petition when the case was called for final hearing at a regular term of the district court of Randall county, and changed the venue of the cause, under the statute, to the district court of Deaf Smith county.

As stated, the judgment assailed is against the appellant on a replevy bond, and it is noted that the judgment recites that the plaintiffs, in the proceeding in the district court of Deaf Smith county, “do have and recover of and from the defendants, E. F. Brown, L. T. Lester and G. L. Abbott, jointly and severally the sum of $- — , „5 eing the amount of said, replevy bond, for which execution may issue in favor of the respective plaintiffs to the amount of the several respective judgments”; limiting the recovery, as indicated, to the amount of the other judgments recovered by plaintiffs against the various parties, and which judgments, we assume in this proceeding only, the judgment upon the replevy bond covered.

[1] In this ease, as in any other proceeding for injunction, the consideration of the equities is referable to the allegations of fact, and not of conclusions, for the purpose of invoking the relief prayed for. The conclusion pleaded — that the judgment is void because of the alteration — is unavailable, if, upon consideration of the petition, sufficient allegations of fact are not made negativing its validity and overcoming the presumption ordinarily incident to the rendition of every judgment.

[2] Appellant also alleges that the judgment for the sum of “$-,” as quoted herein, rendered against him as an obligor on the replevy bond in the other proceeding, was, by the appellees, or some one of them, fraudulently altered by writing in said blank space the figures “15,000,” making the judgment as to him read for the sum of “$15,-000.” The appellant, however, does not inform us whether the correct amount, or an incorrect entry as to the real amount of the judgment, was inserted in the blank space.

[3] Evidently, the judgment, as it reads, was for “the amount of said replevy bond”; and appellant’s allegation that it was a judgment upon a replevy bond, conclusively presumes it to be a record in that cause. Neither does the appellant inform us of the amount of the replevy bond which he signed as surety in the other cause in Deaf Smith county.

[4] It will be remembered that, in this collateral proceeding, we are not concerned with the question whether the district court of Deaf Smith county pronounced an erroneous or correct judgment in decreeing the amount recovered by the plaintiffs against appellant. upon said replevy bond as the amount designated in the bond, or that such judgment should have been for the amount of the value of the cattle, or some other amount. In this proceeding, under the allegations in plaintiff’s petition, the judgment for the amount in the replevy bond is to us a correct amount, and, whatever the amount, could not be questioned by us, if the decree is to be regarded by us as sufficiently certain, viewing the petition, as the rendition of a judgment for any specific sum.

*392 The case of Luter v. Rose, 16 Tex. 52, 53, was one upon appeal from the justice court to the district court, where the cause was tried de novo. The justice court judgment was for the plaintiff for $73, and costs of suit. The district court judgment was as folio Vs: “In this case it is ordered that the judgment of the court below (the justice court)' be affirmed, with 10 per cent. dam-, ages,” etc.- — without any statement whatever in figures or letters of any amount rendered in the district court, except by reference to the justice court judgment, which did state the amount.

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Bluebook (online)
166 S.W. 389, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 679, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lester-v-gatewood-texapp-1914.