Skyline Furniture, Inc. v. Gifford

433 S.W.2d 950, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 2727
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedOctober 16, 1968
Docket5964
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 433 S.W.2d 950 (Skyline Furniture, Inc. v. Gifford) 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
Skyline Furniture, Inc. v. Gifford, 433 S.W.2d 950, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 2727 (Tex. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

OPINION

FRASER, Chief Justice.

This is an appeal from the County Court at Law No. 2 of El Paso County, Texas. The facts, briefly, are that appellee brought suit on a promissory note secured by a chattel mortgage which appellee had purchased from appellant. The basic part of such assignment is as follows:

“PAY TO FINANCE TRUST CO. WITHOUT RECOURSE, For VALUE RECEIVED, the promissory note and purchase money mortgage between the Purchaser and undersigned are hereby endorsed and assigned respectively to said assignee and all right, title and interest of the undersigned in and to the property therein described, together with all moneys due or to become due or payable thereunder are hereby sold, assigned and transferred by the undersigned to the said endorsee-assignee. This assignment is made WITHOUT RECOURSE but the undersigned makes the following warranties : * * * (d) That the Purchaser is of legal age * * *.”
“The undersigned agrees that in the event of the breach of any of the foregoing warranties the waiver of recourse against said undersigned shall be abrogated and the said undersigned unconditionally guarantees the full performance of all of the terms and conditions of said note and contract by the Purchaser therein.”

Trial was to the court without a jury, ap-pellee seeking to recover against appellant by reason of the breach of an express warranty included in the excerpt above, which was to the effect that the original purchaser of the merchandise from appellant was of legal age, which he was not. The court entered judgment in behalf of the appellee for principal, interest and attorney’s fees in the total amount of $531.64. No Findings of Fact or Conclusions of Law were requested by appellant and none have been filed.

As stated above, appellant sold the merchandise to a minor, and then negotiated the note and mortgage to appellee by the instrument, the salient parts of which we have already included. It might be well to say here that the endorsement and assignment, while reciting that it was without recourse, contained several warranties made by appellant to appellee. The pertinent one is contained in sub-paragraph (d), and is a part of the excerpt already included in this opinion. It will be noted that while the assignment is made without recourse, the assignor or undersigned made the following warranty : * * * (d) That the Purchaser is of legal age.” As will be noticed, this excerpt from the assignment also states that in the event of the breach of any of the foregoing warranties, the waiver of re *953 course against said undersigned shall be abrogated and the said undersigned unconditionally guarantees the full performance of all of the terms and conditions of said note and contract by the purchaser therein.

It is not disputed that defendant Scott Hamilton and Allen H. Beuchler are, in fact, one and the same person, and that the note was executed by Scott Hamilton as maker. It is also agreed that there is evidence that at the time Hamilton executed the note, he was not of legal age. On discovering that Hamilton was not of legal age, appellee brought suit seeking to enforce liability on appellant by reason of the contract, and the breach of warranty, and the unconditional guarantee as set forth above.

The case was tried on plaintiff’s Second Amended Original Petition, which incorporated the contract by reference and included a prayer for general relief; and on appellant’s Original Answer, an un-sworn general denial.

The point of error relied on by appellant, and his assignments of error set forth under such point of error, are “no evidence” points. It is elementary that a “no evidence” point can be sustained only in the absence of evidence of a vital fact, or that the court is barred by rules of law or evidence from giving any weight to the only evidence offered to prove a vital fact; or that the evidence offered to prove a vital fact is no more than a mere scintilla; and lastly, that the evidence establishes conclusively the opposite of the vital fact. This rule is so evident that we will not present any citations other than the article by Chief Justice Calvert, entitled “ ‘No Evidence’ and ‘Insufficient Evidence’ Points of Error”, 38 Texas Law Review 361, 362; and State v. Vargas, 419 S.W.2d 926 (San Antonio Tex.Civ.App., n. w. h.). This position of the appellant cannot be sustained because even a cursory examination of the record shows that there is evidence on the salient points. It is undisputed that the maker (the minor) executed a note for a valuable consideration and delivered it to appellant, and that following this transaction, the appellant executed the endorsement and assignment referred to above, for a valuable consideration, and delivered the said instrument to the appellee. It is obvious that the appellee was a holder in due course, in that he acquired the instrument, which was complete and regular on its face, was not over-due, paid a valuable consideration therefor, and purchased the note without notice of any infirmity in the instrument or defects in the appellant’s title thereto. Appellant does not dispute the fact that the maker of the note was not of legal age when he purchased the merchandise from Skyline Furniture Company and the note in question was executed. Under the record as here presented, the test set forth by Chief Justice Calvert was not met by the appellant because there is evidence in the record supporting the judgment, and therefore appellant’s “no evidence” point is not well taken.

Further, it must be noted that this case was tried without a jury, and no Findings of Fact or Conclusions of Law were requested or filed, and therefore the judgment should be affirmed if there is sufficient evidence to support it on any lawful theory, and every issue sufficiently raised by the evidence must be resolved in support of the judgment. Sunset Brick & Tile, Inc. v. Bushong, 419 S.W.2d 386 (Tex.Civ.App., n. w. h.); Henderson v. Willmon, 407 S.W.2d 24 (Tex.Civ.App., wr. dism.); 4 Tex.Jur.2d, Appeal and Error, § 747. It is our opinion that there are several theories upon which the trial court’s judgment finds support. For example, appellant unconditionally guaranteed the obligation in. the event of a breach of any of the warranties set forth in the endorsement (the instrument itself recites under (d) that the purchaser is of legal age). Also, in the instrument of assignment, appellant, on breach of any of the warranties, abrogated the waiver of recourse, and his endorsement became unconditional and unqualified. With respect *954 to this particular point, there is no dispute, as we have said before, that the appellant expressly warranted to the appellee that the purchaser, Scott Hamilton, was “of legal age” at the time the instrument was negotiated.

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

Related

Modern Exploration, Inc. v. Maddison
708 S.W.2d 872 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1986)
Gulf & Basco Co. v. Buchanan
707 S.W.2d 655 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1986)
Aztec Services, Inc. v. Quintana-Howell Joint Venture
632 S.W.2d 160 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1982)
Barnhill v. Moore
630 S.W.2d 817 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1982)
Butler v. Benefield
589 S.W.2d 778 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1979)
Cook v. Citizens National Bank of Beaumont
538 S.W.2d 460 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1976)
Miller v. Doughty
520 S.W.2d 586 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1975)
Pickering v. First Pyramid Life Insurance Co. of America
491 S.W.2d 184 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1973)
Legal Security Life Insurance Co. v. Thomas
481 S.W.2d 178 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1972)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
433 S.W.2d 950, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 2727, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/skyline-furniture-inc-v-gifford-texapp-1968.