Long Island MacHinery & Equipment Co. v. Baird

117 S.W.2d 565, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 618
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 19, 1938
DocketNo. 10764.
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 117 S.W.2d 565 (Long Island MacHinery & Equipment Co. v. Baird) 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
Long Island MacHinery & Equipment Co. v. Baird, 117 S.W.2d 565, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 618 (Tex. Ct. App. 1938).

Opinions

CODY, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the trial court granting a temporary injunction. It involves a conflict .of jurisdiction between the district court of Trinity County and that of the United States for the Southern District of Texas.

On December 23, 1936, Paul T. Sander-son, the Receiver of the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine Railway Company was, by an order duly entered in cause. No. 4832, styled “J. T. Baird vs. Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine Railway Company”, directed by the district court of Trinity County to obtain bids on all the iron and steel track materials,' including the rails, fastenings, spikes, exclusive of all bridge materials other than that constituting the White Creek bridge, but inclusive of its materials, on the Colmesneil Branch line of such railway company. On that date the Long.Is.land Machinery & Equipment Company bid therefor the sum of $13 per gross or' long ton. This bid was duly reported, and the court ordered it accepted, and approved the form of the contract of sale, and confirmed the sale. Under- orders of the court, and according to the terms of the contract, the sold out material was delivered to the- Com; pany “as is and where is”, on the estimated gross tonnage of 6,094 tons; and the .Company paid therefor the sum of $79,220, being the price on the basis of $13 per gross ton. The Company, however, was required to, and did deposit in the Trinity State Bank the sum of $4,220 and the receiver, out of the $79,220, was required to place the like sum of $4,220 with said bank. This deposit, it is clear, was substituted for the sold out material to insure that, on final settlement, in case the actual tonnáge was found to be more than the estimated 6,094 gross tons, it should be applied to the payment for such excess pro tanto; or in case the actual tonnage was found to be less than the estimated tonnage, the purchase price should be abated correspondingly. The sold out material had to be moved by rail to shipside, and, for that purpose, had to be weighed by rail carriers; so, it was provided that the final settlement would be made on the basis of the'weight certified to by the railroads that transported such material.

The Company began to remove the sold out material shortly after it bought it, and was occupied in so doing until about August 1, 1937. Upon final settlement the Company produced the railroad certificates showing that the sold out material which ’it had shipped by ’’rail totaled only .5,689.5806 gross tons; and demanded that the bank pay over to it the total deposit of $8,440. The receiver did not contest the accuracy of the weight certificates issued, by the railroads that transported the sold out material, as covering all the material that moved over the scales of the railroads. He did contend,' however, that large quantities of small scrap had not been removed, and that much of it which had been removed had been negligently permitted by the Company to be appropriated by strangers. When the rails were taken up from the roadbed, they were strung along the neighboring highway, and the small scrap was piled along the side of the highway to await removal by authorized subcontractors. The receiver complained about the manner in which the Company was removing the sold out material; peace officers actually caught trucks loaded with such removed rails and small scrap from time to time, and recovered unauthorized removals, (There seems to have been no distinguishing marks on the trucks of the sub-contractors lawfully engaged in hauling, off such material). / The 5,689.5806 gross tons- for •which the Company exhibited weight certificates were about • a - thousand gross tons *567 short of what the receiver contended had been sold to the Company “as is and where is”. This claim he based on the inventory of the Waco, Beaumont, Trinity & Sabine Ry. Co., of such material, as changed by replacements.

On August 5, 1937, the Company filed, in the Federal court at Houston, a suit, making the bank alone a defendant, seeking a declaratory judgment of its rights to the $8,440 deposit; and prayed for a mandatory injunction to compel the bank to transfer such sum to it. On August 12, in that suit, the bank was ordered to show cause why such injunction should not be granted. The bank then asked leave to interplead the receiver, and to be permitted to file a bond instead of paying over the funds, which requests the Federal court granted. However, the bank did subsequently, with the court’s approval, pay into the registry of the court the $8,440 deposit. In response to the process, issued on the bank’s prayer to interplead him, the receiver made a limited appearance in the Federal court. But on September 8, 1937, the judge made the following ruling:

“After considering the contracts of December 23, 1936, between Paul T. Sander-son, Receiver, and the Long Island Machinery & Equipment Company, Inc., I strongly incline to the view that the district court of Trinity County, where such receivership is pending, has jurisdiction of the controversy sought to be litigated here, and may give all parties full and adequate relief ; and believing that great care should be taken to avoid conflicts of jurisdiction between Federal and State courts, the prayer is denied. I decide no other questions.”

The receiver was thereupon dismissed from the Federal suit.

On August 10, 1937, the receiver applied to the State court for leave to file suit against the Company, and, on leave granted, filed a suit against the Company to recover the alleged under payment of its bid, and sued out an attachment and garnishment on the $8,440 deposited in the bank. Later, on October 26, but under the number and style of the receivership proceeding, the plaintiff in such receivership proceeding, together with the receiver, under the style of “relators”, brought suit against the Company and J. H. Benckenstein, as its .agent in Texas, and against him and J. M. Moore, and J. T. Scott, Jr., as the Company’s attorneys in the Federal court suit, •styling them “respondents”. Relators’ pleading is quite lengthy. For present purposes it is enough to say that it alleged that the $8,440 was deposited in the bank in payment of, and in compliance with, its bid on the sold out materials made on December 23, 1936, under orders of the court and in conformity with the contract; that the deposit so placed in the bank was placed under the control and jurisdiction of the court in place of the sold out material, which was theretofore delivered and released to the Company, and that such deposit was to insure compliance with its bid, as the final amount was determined on final settlement; that the amount of sold out material delivered “as is and where is” to the Company on December 23, 1936, was 6,603.9049 gross tons, and that the Company was negligent in failing to have so much of the sold out material as constituted the difference between such gross tonnage actually delivered to it, and the 5,689.5806 which it had weighed, included and shown by the railroad weight certificates. The value of the sold out material at the specified purchase price was alleged to be in a sum in excess of the amount of $8,440 deposited in the bank. Relators’ pleading further alleged that, in bidding in the property, and depositing the sum in the bank, under orders of the court and in compliance with the contract to insure the payment of its bid on final accounting, the Company had thereby submitted to the jurisdiction of the court for the purpose of such final accounting; and that the $8,440 was under the court’s jurisdiction and control.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
117 S.W.2d 565, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 618, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/long-island-machinery-equipment-co-v-baird-texapp-1938.