Court Opinion

ID: 9653074
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:38:18.388759+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:56.266892
License: Public Domain

CARROLL, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The dissenting opinion filed herein on May 22, 1996 is withdrawn, and the following is issued in lieu thereof.
I respectfully dissent. I find no merit in the bases on which Silverthorne alleges the assignment is illegal and invalid. I therefore would affirm the judgment because evidence supports the trial court’s finding that, when paying Kimes the entire fee, Silverthorne wrongly ignored Kimes’s assignment of part of the fee to Mosley. In doing so, Silver-thorne ignored Kimes’s statement regarding the split of the fee and Mosley’s written and personal reminders.
I agree with the court’s decision not to reverse on any of the four grounds of invalidity or illegality argued by Silverthorne in points of error one and two. The statutes and rules he contends the Kimes-Mosley agreement violated do not apply to an assignment of a fee between attorneys.1 Neither does the lack of a writing invalidate the assignment. Debts, choses in action, and other contract rights can be assigned orally unless some statute or the underlying contract requires a written transfer. Villiers v. Republic Fin. Servs., Inc., 602 S.W.2d 566, 569 (Tex.Civ.App.—Texarkana 1980, writ ref'd n.r.e.); see also First Nat’l Bank of San Angelo v. Sheffield, 475 S.W.2d 820, 821 (Tex.Civ.App.—Austin 1972, no writ). Neither the Kimes-Silverthome contract nor the statutes require a written transfer of a portion of the fee. I would overrule these first two points of error.
The court instead sets out the law of equitable assignment and decides that the evidence conclusively shows that the Kimes-Mosley agreement does not satisfy the requirements. I disagree. I would find that evidence supports the finding of an equitable assignment.
Silverthorne’s knowledge of and benefit from Mosley’s work influences my decision. Silverthorne knew that Kimes hired Mosley to work on the coal case. Mosley worked about 350 hours on the case while in Kimes’s office and continued to work on it after leaving Kimes’s office. He even volunteered to check the settlement agreement. His work helped achieve the settlement. Kimes ac*685knowledged Mosley’s work by paying him twenty percent of Silverthorne’s initial payment. Kimes’s check to Mosley bore the notation “partial payment.”
A larger factor in my decision is Silver-thorne’s knowledge of the Kimes-Mosley agreement and his disregard for Mosley’s warning of trouble regarding its performance. Kimes told Silverthorne during the pendency of the coal case that Mosley would receive twenty percent of any fee earned in the case. After the first fee payment, Mosley, concerned that Kimes would not pass along any more payments, reminded Silver-thorne in writing and in person of the Kimes-Mosley agreement. Mosley asked Silverthorne to either pay him directly twenty percent of the balance or pay that twenty percent jointly to Mosley and Kimes. Silver-thorne declined to pay Mosley partly because he had contracted with Kimes and not with Mosley. Silverthorne consulted Kimes and, in the face of Kimes’s threat that he could sue Silverthorne for the full amount, paid Kimes the remaining $330,000.
The evidence showed more than a mere promise to pay from a designated fund. Kimes did not just promise to pay Mosley something out of his one-third of Silver-thorne’s $1.5 million recovery; he allotted to Mosley a specific portion, twenty percent, of his one-third. Kimes made no condition that he could refuse to pay Mosley even if Mosley performed, Silverthorne prevailed, and Kimes received his one-third share of the recovery as a fee. That Silverthorne would have risked being sued by Kimes does not mean that he could not “safely pay” Mosley. Kimes initially recognized the validity of his assignment by passing along to Mosley twenty percent of Silverthorne’s first payment to Kimes; he evinced no power to deny Mosley’s payment. Silverthorne’s knowledge of the agreement and Kimes’s partial performance of the agreement are, to my mind, critical additional facts that take this case beyond the parameters of the Latham case. See Central Nat’l Bank v. Latham & Co., 22 S.W.2d 765, 767 (Tex.Civ.App.—Waco 1929, writ ref d).
I would overrule Silverthorne’s contention in point of error three that he is an innocent trapped in a dispute between Kimes and Mosley. Silverthorne lost his innocence when Mosley visited his office. After a debt- or receives notice of a valid assignment, payment by the debtor to the assignor or to any person other than the assignee is made at the debtor’s peril and does not discharge the debtor from liability to the assignee. Buffalo Pipeline Co. v. Bell, 694 S.W.2d 592, 596 (Tex.App.—Corpus Christi 1985, writ refd n.r.e.). When Silverthorne ignored Mosley’s request for inclusion in the final check, he joined the fray, however unwillingly or unwittingly.
Though I understand the dilemma in which Silverthorne found himself, I also understand that Mosley provided a service, earned a fee, warned that the fee might not be passed along as agreed, and has not been paid fully. Faced with competing claims, Silverthorne could have and should have paid the sums into the registry of the court through an action of interpleader; he had seen inter-pleader work in the underlying coal case. The cost of such an action would have been paid out of the funds and the fight between the attorneys would have been left behind along with the risk. I would affirm the judgment because I believe Silverthorne has not presented a basis for reversing the judgment.

. See Tex. Gov’t Code Ann. § 82.065(a) (West Supp.1996) and Tex. Disciplinary R. Prof. Conduct 1.04 (State Bar rules art. X, § 9) (both requiring that legal-fee contracts between attorney and client must be written); see also Tex. Prop.Code Ann. § 12.014 (West 1984) (governing transfers of judgments or causes of action).