Zachry v. McKown

326 S.W.2d 227, 1959 Tex. App. LEXIS 1979
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 15, 1959
Docket10685
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 326 S.W.2d 227 (Zachry v. McKown) 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
Zachry v. McKown, 326 S.W.2d 227, 1959 Tex. App. LEXIS 1979 (Tex. Ct. App. 1959).

Opinion

GRAY, Justice.

Appellant sued appellees for damages for the breach of a written warranty and has appealed from a judgment rendered non obstante veredicto.

Appellant was awarded a construction contract in the performance of which a large amount of sand and gravel was required. To supply his needs for sand and gravel appellant purchased from appellees for a consideration of $750,000 all of the outstanding capital stock of Austin Sand and Gravel Company. This stock and the company were owned by appellees. The assets of this company consisted of sand and gravel leases, asphalt and sand and gravel plants together with equipment and machinery necessary for the operation of said plants.

The above purchase was by a written contract dated March 11, 1957 which provided that the sale of said stock should be closed as of March 31, 1957 and that appellant should take over the operation of the company on April 1, 1957. The contract recited :

*229 “The corporation is the owner of and has good and merchantable title to fully equipped sand, gravel and asphalt plants, together with various good and valid sand and gravel leases, and said plants, together with all of their associated operating equipment, are in good repair.”

Appellant alleged that after the purchase he discovered that the plants and their operating equipment were not in good repair as appellees had warranted them to be but on the contrary they were badly in need of repair. He alleged that necessary repairs were made by him and further alleged that the actual value of the above stock with the plants and equipment in the condition they were in was $625,000, while if they had been as warranted such actual value would have been $750,000.

A jury trial was had and in answer to three special issues submitted the jury found that: (1) the plants and their operating equipment were not in good repair on April 1, 1957; (2) that the actual value of the company stock on April 1, 1957 was $725,000 and (3) if the plants and their operating equipment had been in good repair on April 1, 1957 the actual value of the company stock would have been $750,000.

Upon the return of the verdict supra appellant filed his motion for judgment on the jury’s verdict, and appellees filed their motion for judgment non obstante veredic-to. Appellant’s motion was overruled, ap-pellees’ was granted and a judgment was rendered that appellant take nothing by his suit.

Appellant here presents two points. These are that the trial court erred: in overruling his motion for judgment on the jury’s verdict, and in sustaining appellees’ motion for judgment non obstante veredic-to.

Appellees present seven counterpoints. These are to the effect that there is no evidence to support the jury’s answer to: issue 2; to issue 3; the condition of the equipment on April 1, 1957 was immaterial because the warranty in the contract referred to its condition on March 11, 1957; absent a finding that the decreased value of the stock was due solely to the lack of repair of the equipment the verdict of the jury affords no basis for a judgment for appellant; appellant waived any right he may have had to recover damages for breach of the warranty; the statement in the contract that the plants and equipment were in good repair was not intended by the parties to be a warranty, and appellant waived any right he may have had to recover on any ground not submitted to the jury and the judgment should be affirmed because the jury’s verdict does not entitle him to a judgment.

Appellant’s points are related and we will consider them in reverse order. However our statement of the evidence will necessarily be relevant to appellees’ counterpoints. Further there were two sand and gravel plants conveyed by the contract supra. These are referred to as plant 1 and plant 2 but there is no complaint as to plant 1 and our consideration of the evidence will be directed to plant 2.

It is our duty to determine from the record if there is evidence of probative value to support the jury’s answers, and in doing so we must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to appellant, disregard conflicts in the evidence and indulge reasonable intendments deducible from the evidence in favor of appellant and against the judgment non obstante veredicto. Le-Master v. Fort Worth Transit Co., 138 Tex. 512, 160 S.W.2d 224. McAfee v. Travis Gas Corporation, 137 Tex. 314, 153 S.W.2d 442. 3-B Tex.Jur. p. 382, sec. 914.

The evidence shows that appellant is a graduate civil engineer, that he has been engaged in construction work for many years and that he is familiar and experienced with both the machinery and the operation of plants of the kind in question here. He testified that several months before bids were to be received for the con *230 struction job that he, and others, had notice of the type, nature and size of the proposed job including the approximate amount of concrete that would be required. He said that in anticipation of securing the contract that he began looking for a supply of sand and gravel sufficient to supply his needs. He said:

“ * * * we had figured the job on the basis of a quotation that we had from Janes Sand and Gravel Company. That is the price we used in our bid. We also had secured some time prior to the opening of these bids leases from various property owners up and down the river on which tests showed that we had ample quantities to provide the material for the job if we should choose to produce it ourselves. So after the bids were opened and the contract was awarded to us, we used a procedure of determining whether it was to our advantage to buy the material from Janes, to set up our own plant and produce it, or to buy the plant from the McKown Brothers.”

He said that in arriving at the price he agreed to pay appellees he considered and gave weight to the fact that their plant was already established.

“Time was very vital for two reasons. Number one, we have a contract completion date on all government contracts, and most private contracts. Number two, when we commit a sizable amount of equipment and a sizable part of our organization to the job, they are tied up and their expenses are part of the job cost for as long as they are on the project. If we can get them on and get them off in three-fourths of the time or half the time, we have very appreciably added to our possible profit.”

He said that appellees represented to him that their plants were in good repair, that he knew that if he could start sand and gravel production immediately after becoming the successful bidder for the job that he could stockpile enough of it ahead that when concrete operations began the one plant could produce enough sand and gravel to maintain his schedule. He said that:

“It was my belief that Plant No. 2 could produce the total requirements of that job. The principal reason for it, Number 2 was a brand-new plant that the McKown Brothers had just set in.

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Bluebook (online)
326 S.W.2d 227, 1959 Tex. App. LEXIS 1979, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/zachry-v-mckown-texapp-1959.