Texas Warehouse Co. v. Imperial Rice Co.

164 S.W. 396, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 1214
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 12, 1914
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 164 S.W. 396 (Texas Warehouse Co. v. Imperial Rice Co.) 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
Texas Warehouse Co. v. Imperial Rice Co., 164 S.W. 396, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 1214 (Tex. Ct. App. 1914).

Opinion

HARPER, C. J.

This is a suit brought by the Imperial Rice Company, a partnership composed of Leo Hahn and T. F. Ryan, as plaintiff, against the Texas Warehouse Company and the Houston National Exchange Bank, as defendants. The suit is for the alleged conversion by the Texas Warehouse Company of a rice mixer, the property of the plaintiffs, and on which the Houston National Exchange Bank had a mortgage, together with damages for profits alleged by plaintiffs to have been lost by them on account of their inability to fill orders for rice by reason of such conversion. The Texas Warehouse Company set up a counterclaim for storage charges due it. The judgment, was in favor of the plaintiffs and defendant bank against the Warehouse Company for $1,375 and in favor of defendant Texas Warehouse Company for $75. The Texas Warehouse Company, in due time, filed in the court below its motion for a new trial, in which was set up all the errors here complained of. The motion for a new trial was overruled. The appeal bond was filed in the time required by law, and the judgment of the lower court is now properly before this court for review.

The first assignment of error follows: “The court erred in the paragraph of his charge numbered III, wherein it was stated to the jury, as the law of this ease, that the warehouse company would not be authorized to exercise the right to hold the rice mixing plant for anything other than the storage charges due upon it, because there was sufficient evidence in the record from which the jury would have been justified in concluding that the arrangements for the storage of rice and the arrangement for storing the rice mixer were all parts of one and the same contract, entered into at the same time, and because there was evidence that at the date of the alleged conversion there was due the Warehouse Company .charges on rice *397 that had been theretofore stored in the warehouse under the same contract under which the mixer was stored, and that such rice had been removed without the payment of the charges that had accrued thereon, and it was error therefore for the court to charge the jury that the Warehouse Company was not authorized to hold the mixing plant to secure the payment of any other charges except that which had accrued on - the mixer itself. First Proposition. Where goods are stored with a warehouseman under one general contract of bailment, the warehouseman has a general lien on all such goods for any storage charges that may accrue on any part thereof, and in enforcing his lien he is not limited to the identical articles on which the charges he seeks to collect accrued. Under such circumstances, he may enforce a lien to satisfy any charges owing to him against any property he may have in hand, provided only that the contract under which such property was stored is the same as that under which the charges accrued.”

There being no pleading to support a recovery of charges for rice stored with machine, the assignment is overruled.

The second and third assignments being to the same effect are disposed of by what is said above.

The facts leading up to this suit, and upon which the plaintiff relied for a recovery, are substantially as follows: In the year 1909, the Imperial Rice Company placed in' the warehouse of the Texas Warehouse Company a rice mixing machine under an agreement to pay $15 per month for such time as same might remain in the warehouse. It remained in the warehouse and the rental was paid up to May 1, 1911, after which date no rents were paid. On August 28th, following, the Imperial Rice Company by letter demanded possession of the mixing plant, and tendered $75, three months’ rent. The Warehouse Company refused to deliver possession, giving as their reason that the plaintiff had other articles stored with it, for which they had not paid storage.

The fourth assignment charges that the court erred in charging the jury that the measure of damages for the conversion is the reasonable value of the mixing plant at the time it was converted; the proposition being that the market value is the measuré of damages for conversion, and, where there is any evidence that the article had a market value, the issue must be submitted to the jury.

There is some evidence that the machine had a market value at the time of its alleged conversion, and the question of value .should have been submitted to the jury in the alternative, that is, if, from the evidence, the jury found that there was a market value for the mixing plant, then the measure of plaintiff’s damages was the reasonable market value of the property at the time and place of its conversion, with lawful interest; If the jury should find that the machine had no market value, then the rule of damages is the value of the goods to the owner. City of Dallas v. Allen, 40 S. W. 324. And the rule as to the market value of secondhand goods is not what one might get for them from a secondhand dealer, but what it would cost a person to purchase such goods in the open market, if there was a market for such goods. Souther v. Hunt, 141 S. W. 361; Texarkana & Ft. S. Ry. Co. v. Neches Iron Works, 57 Tex. Civ. App. 249, 122 S. W. 64.

Appellee asserts as a counter proposition “that where it is shown by evidence that a machinery plant which is to be built from its component parts and installed to suit the particular location, as in this case, and has been used to such an extent as to become second hand, the law will presume, in the absence of evidence of a market value, that there is no market value therefor.” The market value is the true rule, and it must first affirmatively be shown that there is no market value before evidence of reasonable value should be admitted from the evidence, or, if there is doubt about there being a market value, then it is a question for the jury to determine.

' In the instant case there is positive evidence that the machinery of the mixing plant had a market value, and, if plaintiff’s demand for possession had been acceded to, the machinery was all of any value that he would have been able to take possession of, and the value of this, as it would have been dismantled, and no' more, is all he should recover for, if wrongfully converted.

The fifth assignment charges that the trial court erred in paragraph 7 of its charge to the jury, which is as follows: “You are further charged in this case that, under the contract of storage between the plaintiffs, Imperial Rice Company, and the defendant Warehouse Company, that the Imperial Rice Company, through its employés, was entitled to access to their said mixing plant, and to the use of sufficient space to operate the same, and if you believe from the evidence that the defendant company,' on the 29th day of September, 1911, refused permission to plaintiffs or their employés to use the said mixing plant and necessary space to operate the same, then you will consider whether or not plaintiffs sustained any loss or damage in the way of profits which they could have otherwise earned, if they had had the use of said mixing plant.

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

Related

John E. Morriss Co. v. O'Neal
109 S.W.2d 1156 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1937)
Saner-Whiteman Lumber Co. v. Texas & N. O. R.
282 S.W. 267 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1925)
Early-Foster Co. v. Mid-Tex Oil Mills
208 S.W. 224 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1918)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
164 S.W. 396, 1914 Tex. App. LEXIS 1214, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/texas-warehouse-co-v-imperial-rice-co-texapp-1914.