Southwestern Drug Corp. v. First Nat. Bank

45 S.W.2d 424
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 6, 1932
DocketNo. 3694
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 45 S.W.2d 424 (Southwestern Drug Corp. v. First Nat. Bank) 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
Southwestern Drug Corp. v. First Nat. Bank, 45 S.W.2d 424 (Tex. Ct. App. 1932).

Opinion

HALL, C. J.

This suit was instituted by the Southwestern Drug Corporation against P. R. Brown, as owner of the Rule Building Drug Store, and against the appellee bank and L. G. Palmer.

The plaintiff sought to recover against the Austin Drug Company No. 2 upon certain notes dated Nov. 4, 1929, and to foreclose a chattel mortgage given by the Austin Drug Company to plaintiff on the same day. Plaintiff alleged that the Austin Drug Company had executed a chattel mortgage to the First National Bank, dated May 8, 1929, which had been duly filed for registration prior to the execution of the mortgage given to it, but alleged that the mortgage to the First National Bank was void: First, because it described a note for $3,500 and that no such note was given, and that, on account of the misdescription of the indebtedness, the mortgage was null and void; and, second, because the mortgage upon the Austin Drug Company’s property was given .to secure the personal indebtedness of I/.. G. Palmer, its president, and was therefore not enforceable against the property of the corporation.

[425]*425Tlie bank filed a first amended original answer, consisting of a general demurrer and general denial, and in addition thereto sought to recover upon its note and foreclose its mortgage against the Austin Drug Company, alleging that the note intended to be secured by the mortgage was described therein as a note for $3,500 by mistake. That the note actually secured was one for $2,500, which was in all other respects similar to the note described in its chattel mortgage, and pleaded that its mortgage was prior and superior to the mortgage sought to be foreclosed by plaintiff.

A jury was impaneled to try the case, but upon the conclusion of the testimony the court directed a verdict in favor of plaintiff, and for the foreclosure of its chattel mortgage lien, but decreed that such lien was in all things inferior to the lien of the First National Bank, and that the foreclosure should be subject to all of the superior rights of the bank.

The case is submitted here upon two propositions.

By the first proposition it is insisted that the court erred in directing a verdict for the bank and in refusing to direct a verdict for plaintiff, because the testimony of the witness and codefendant Palmer clearly was that the mortgage dated May 8, 1929, signed by Austin Drug Company No. 2, was given to secure a $3,500 note, as is recited by the mortgage, and the note which was introduced in evidence as the Defendant’s Exhibit A was a $2,500 note, and there is no evidence either in the wording of said note or other extrinsic sources that said note was a chattel mortgage note, or that it had ever been secured by the mortgage dated May 8, 1929, or by any other mortgage, and that for that reason there was a fatal defect in the description of said note in the mortgage, and that there was no way that the court could construe said $2,500 note and said $3,500 mortgage together, and there was no proper description of a $2,500 indebtedness in said mortgage, and further, because plaintiff’s mortgage dated November 4, 1929, was not challenged or questioned in any way in the pleadings or evidence and should have been foreclosed by the court.

By the second proposition the appellant insists that the court should have given plaintiff’s special requested issue No. 3, submitting the questions as to whether or not the note for $2,500, signed by Austin Drug Company No. 2, was ever intended to be secured by the mortgage dated May 8, 1929, because there is a serious conflict in the evidence, in that D. G. Palmer, one of the defendants, testified that the only note which he ever signed in connection with the mortgage dated May 8, 1929, was a $3,500 note, while the note introduced in evidence by the defendant bank as Exhibit A was a $2,500 note, and there was nó evidence that it had ever been a $3,500 note, which presented a question of fact as to whether or not the $2,500 note was the one which was intended to be secured by the mortgage of May 8, 1929.

The $2,500 note was introduced in evidence by the bank without objection. When reduced to their final analysis, the appellant’s contentions amount to this: That the misde-scription of the debt secured in the mortgage rendered the mortgage void as against the mortgage subsequently executed to the Southwestern Drug Corporation.

As said in 11 C. J. 4T5, § 107:

“The weight of authority is that a mis-description in the mortgage of the nature of the debt is not necessarily fatal and a clerical inaccuracy which does not in fact mislead may be disregarded. * * * In a proper case, however, the mortgagee may have the instrument reformed in a court of equity if no rights are thereby cut off. The fact that a renewal note has been given is sufficient to account for a misdescription of the debt secured by mortgage.”

The rule last announced in the text is supported by Barrows v. Turner, 50 Me. 127; Clark v. Houghton, 12 Gray (Mass.) 38.

It is held in Bailey v. Culver (Tex. Civ. App.) 175 S. W. 1083, 1084:

“But if such misdescription had been material, equity, upon a proper showing of mutual mistake, would have reformed and enforced the mortgage, and the evidence in this case was sufficient to justify such reformation. However, we deem the error as to describing the debt immaterial, for the reason that it was the debt, and not the note, that was secured by the mortgage. Aycock v. Trammell, 77 Tex. 487, 14 S. W. 147; Meyer Bros. v. Rather [Tex. Civ. App.] 30 S. W. 812; Simon v. Ash [1 Tex. Civ. App. 202], 20 S. W. 719.
“In Meyer Bros. v. Rather, supra, the court quotes with approval from Cobby on Chattel Mortgages, as follows:
“‘The validity of a mortgage depends on the genuineness of the debt which the mortgage is to secure, and not upon the description of the debt contained in the mortgage. * * * A misdescription of the note given as evidence of the debt, in the chattel mortgage securing the same, is not a fatal error, a'nd does not avoid the mortgage.’”

It is further stated in 1st Cobby on Chattel Mortgages, § 120:

“It is enough if the note be so far described [in the mortgage] that it appears with reasonable certainty to be the note intended be secured thereby. * * * Clerical inaccuracies in the description of the debt will not invalidate the lien as against the mortgagor or his subsequent judgment creditors, if the debt be unmistakably identified. * * * Where there is a discrepancy between the. instrument described in the mortgage arid the [426]*426one actually given as evidence of the debt, but it is established that the instrument offered in evidence is the one intended to be described in the mortgage, the courts have been liberal in admitting it. Thus where a note was described in the mortgage as being for $236.00 but when offered in evidence it appeared to be for $256.00 but corresponded in other respects with the description, held, that it was admissible.”

The rule with reference to this matter, as announced in relation to chattel mortgages, obtains even in, real estate transactions.

Quoting from 1 Jones on Mortgages (Sth Ed.), we find this language:

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45 S.W.2d 424, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/southwestern-drug-corp-v-first-nat-bank-texapp-1932.