Court Opinion

ID: 9827554
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:39:27.752596+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:33.248706
License: Public Domain

*606On Motion for Rehearing.
Upon a more mature consideration of this case; we are convinced that upon original hearing we erred in holding that the description of the property, contained in the mortgages in favor of the Graham National Bank, was 'sufficient to give constructive notice to the appellee Beavers of the liens claimed by the bank.
Those mortgages are not set out in full in the statement of facts, but we assume that the following descriptions contained in an abstract statement of them, agreed to by the parties, as shown in the statement of facts, is correct, to wit: Eirst Mortgage, “2,635 feet of 6%-inch casing located on the Moran lease.” Second Mortgage. “2,700 feet on Crowley lease, Stephens county; 2,600 feet 8-inch casing on Owens lease; 2,100 feet, Hughes lease; 4,200 feet on Owens lease; 1,003 feet on Moran lease.”
The Continental Supply Co. v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. (Tex. Com. App.) 268 S. W. 444, in an opinion by the Commission of Appeals, a deed executed by the United States marshal, describing the property conveyed as “120 acres out of the W. A. Rhoades survey, abstract No. 858, and survey No. 84, situated in Eastland county, Tex.,” was held to be void for lack of sufficient description, and it was further held that parol testimony was inadmissible to identify the property conveyed. The court had the following to say in that case:
“Where the land is a part of the larger tract, the deed conveying the included tract or the judgment, the levy, or the probate proceedings offered in evidence, and to which the court may legally look, must contain a general description of the land embraced in the larger tract, in addition to the description of the inclosing tract —a starting point, a datum, referring to the included tract from which it may be traced by extrinsic facts to its location and be found. The general description may be only the name of the owner, a designated person’s interest in the larger tract, or some such fact. But there must be a nucleus of description of the inclosed tract, around which’ extrinsic facts, may be gathered from oral evidence such as locate the land. There must be something in the description to which oral evidence may be tied. AVith-out such datum to, begin with, proof of extrinsic facts is inadmissible. In the absence of such general though inaccurate description of the inclosed tract, to permit oral proof of location would be to pass the title to land by parol in violation of the statute. There is no sort of description, designation, or reference to the 120 acres claimed under the deed in this case, except that it is ‘out of’ the larger tract. The return on the execution does not purport to show that the marshal seized or levied on 120 acres owned by the Houston & Texas Central Railway Company in the Rhoades survey, or any interest of the railway company at all in the road survey. The deed does not say that the land or any interest in it is owned by the railway company. There is nothing in the description of the 120 acres on which to base proof of extrinsic facts in an effort to locate the land.
“This distinction is recognized in all the cases, including the case of McCardell v. Lea, 111 Tex. 380, 235 S. W. 518. In that case, Judge Greenwood said:
“ ‘These proceedings disclose, not an order for the sale of an undefined portion of a larger tract of land, but an order for the sale of the land not previously disposed of and still belonging to the estate of James Davis in the J. D. Martinez league 6 and 9, in Liberty county, west of the Trinity river, estimated at 2,739 acres.’ ”
Another opinion to the same effect was written on a motion for rehearing, as shown in Continental Supply Co. v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. (Tex. Com. App.) 269 S. W. 1040. See, also, Norris v. Hunt, 51 Tex. 609; Pfeiffer v. Lindsay, 66 Tex. 123, 1 S. W. 264; Tram Lumber Co. v. Hancock, 70 Tex. 312, 7 S. W. 724.
As noted in our opinion on original hearing, testimony was introduced to the effect that there were other leases in the same tracts owned by other persons, and known as the “Moran” and “Hughes” leases. Under such circumstances, the description of the land upon which the leases were given, designated as they were in the chattel mortgages, became important 'for the purpose of identifying the casing, and no sufficient description was given of those leases in the mortgages of the land covered by the leases. Furthermore, neither the leases not the casing intended to be covered by the mortgages were described as belonging to the mortgagors. Hence, under the decisions noted above, there was no basis for the introduction of parol testimony to identify either the leases or the casing as the leases and casing owned by the mortgagors.
Under such circumstances, we conclude that the recording of the chattel mortgages was not constructive notice to the appellee Beavers, as found by the trial court, and, since the trial court further found that Beavers had no actual notice of those mortgages, appellee’s motion for rehearing is hereby granted, and the judgment of the ti’ial court is affirmed