The Attorney General of Texas 

August 5, 1981 

Honorable Mike Driscoll 

County Attorney 

Harris County Courthouse 

1001 Preston, Suite 634 

Houston, Texas 77002 

opinion No. ~~-358 

Re: Registration of cattle 

brands under article 6899j, 

V.T.C.S. 

Dear Judge Driscoll: 

You have asked three questions concerning article 68993, 

V.T.C.S., which provides in pertinent part: 

Section 1. (a)...In all...counties each 

owner of any livestock mentioned in Chapter 1 of 

Title 121 of the Revised Civil Statutes of 1925 

shall within six months after this Act takes 

effect have his mark and brand for such stock 

recorded in the office of the county clerk of the 

county. These owners shall record the marks and 

brands whether the brands and marks have been 

previously recorded or not. 

. . . . 

(d) Immediately upon the taking effect of 

this Act the county clerk of the county shall have 

this Act published in some newspaper of general 

circulation in the county for a period of thirty 

days. The publication shall be paid for by the 

county out of the general county fund. 

sec. 2. All clerks in re-registering brands . 

shall comply with Articles 6890 through 6899, 

inclusive, of the Revised Civil Statutes of Texas, 

1925, as amended, and with Section 1, Chapter 273, 

Acts of the 41st Legislature, 1929, as amended 

(Article 6899a...), and shall also be aware of and 

comply with Articles 1484, 1485, and 1486 of the 

Penal Code of Texas, 1925 [see now articles 6997a, 

689Oc, 6898al. 

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Mike Driscoll - Page 2 

Sec. 3. All brands and marks registered 

under the provisions of this Act shall be 

re-registered every 10 years in the manner 

prescribed in Section 1 of this act. 

Article 6899j became effective on August 30, 1971. 

Your questions are as follows: 

1. Under article 68995, is a county clerk 

required to notify the owner of cattle brands 

of the expiration date at the end of the ten 

year period? 

2. Does section 3 of article 68993 require a 

county clerk to publish notice as required in 

section l(d), or did that provision only 

apply when the act initially took effect? 

3. Does a county clerk have any responsibility 

to note in the cattle brand book that such 

brand has expired and/or has been renewed? 

Article 6899j--in particular, the section 3 requirement that 

marks and brands registered under the article be reregistered every 

ten years-was the subject of Attorney General Opinion MW-289 (1980). 

In that opinion, we reconciled this requirement with the requirement 

set forth in article 6890, V.T.C.S., that new cwners of livestock 

record their marks and brands with the clerk of the county in which 

their livestock are located. We pointed out that to construe the 

section 3 requirement as applying only to owners who registered marks 

and brands within six months of August 30, 1971, would .lead to an 

anomalous result. Those owners would be obliged to reregister every 

ten years, while pursuant to article 6890, new owners who first record 

marks or brands after that time would not have to reregister them. We 

therefore concluded that the most sensible interpretation was that: 

Article 6899j, V.T.C.S., requires that all 

marks and brands registered prior to August 30. 

1981, must be reregistered within six months of 

that date, and that the reregistration process 

must be repeated at subsequent ten-year intervals 

for then-current owners. 

With respect to your first question, neither article 6899j nor 

the other statutes mentioned in section 2 thereof suggest that county 

clerks must notify owners of the expiration date of their 

registration. We therefore answer your first question in the 

negative. 

The answer to your second question depends upon the meaning of 

the underlined portion of section 3, which states that "All brands and 

p. 1198 
Mike Driscoll - Page 3 

marks... shall be reregistered every 10 years in the manner prescribed 

in Section 1 of this act." (Emphasis added.) On the one hand, it can 

reasonably be argued that the reference to section 1 does not apply to 

the publication requirement set forth in section l(d) but instead 

applies only to the method and consequences of reregistration itself. 

See §§l(a)-(c). This view gains some support from the fact that 

section l(d) provides that "Immediately upon the taking effect of this 

Act the county clerk... shall have this Act published..." (Emphasis 

added.) This provision suggests that the publication requirement 

existed only when article 68991 first took effect in August, 1971. 

In a brief submitted to this office, however, it is argued that 

the legislature must have intended the reference to section 1 to apply 

to the entire section, including section l(d), because the clear 

purpose of section 3 is to ensure maximum public participation in the 

reregistration process. The brief points out that a livestock owner 

would be as unlikely to be cognizant of the need to reregister ten 

years later as he was of the need to register within six months of 

August 30, 1971. Also, requiring notice of the reregistration 

requirement to be published every ten years is a relatively 

inexpensive way to ensure public awareness of it. 

The law is settled that statutes are to be construed with 

reference to their manifest object. If statutory language is 

susceptible of two constructions, one of which will carry out and the 

other defeat that object, it should receive the former construction. 

Citizens Bank of Bryan v. First State Bank of Hearne, 580 S.W.2d 344 

(Tex. 1979). We conclude that the views expressed in the brief 

referred to above are correct, and that the legislature intended the 

reference to section 1 to apply to the entire reregistration process, 

including the section l(d) publication requirement. In this context, 

it should be noted--to carry the argument set out above one step 

further--that new owners who first record their brands or marks after 

the six-month period following August 30, 1971, has expired would be 

even less likely to be aware of the reregistration requirement than 

those owners who registered during that period. We therefore conclude 

that county clerks are required to publish notice of the 

reregistration requirement every ten years as provided in section l(d) 

of article 6899j. 

With respect to your third question, article 68991 contains no 

such requirement. However, section 2 thereof provides that, when 

reregistering brands, clerks must comply with articles 6890 through 

6899. Article 6898 provides that: 

The clerks of the county courts in their 

respective counties shall keep a well bound book, 

in which they shall record the marks and brands of 

each individual who may apply to them for that 

purpose, noting in every instance the date on 

which the brand or mark is recorded. (Emphasis 

added.) 

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Mike Driscoll - Page 4 

Acts 1971, 62nd Leg.. ch. 886. p. 2721, which relates to the 

microfilming of records by counties, see article 1941(a), V.T.C.S., 

provides in section 2 that all laws or parts of laws in conflict with 

it are repealed to the extent of conflict, including article 6898. 

However, we do not believe the repealer applies to the underlined 

portion of article 6898, because it does not conflict with the 

requirements of the microfilming act. We therefore conclude that 

county clerks are obliged to note the dates on which brands or marks 

are recorded. 

SUMMARY 

Article 6899j, V.T.C.S., does not require 

county clerks to notify owners of cattle brands of 

the expiration date of their registration at the 

end of each ten year period. Section 3 of article 

6899j requires county clerks to publish the notice 

required in section l(d) every ten years. County 

clerks are obliged to note the dates on which 

brands or marks are recorded. 

WHITE 

Attorney General of Texas 

JOHN W. FAINTER, JR. 

First Assistant Attorney General 

RICHARD E. GRAY III 

Executive Assistant Attorney General 

Prepared by Jon Bible 

Assistant Attorney General 

APPROVED: 

OPINION COMMITTEE 

Susan L. Garrison, Chairman 

Jon Bible 

Rick Gilpin 

Jim Moellinger 

Bruce Youngblood 

Peter Nolan 

p. 1200