Court Opinion

ID: 9830292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:04:37.801855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:18.161270
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In their motion for rehearing ap-pellees present their view of the option, which plaintiff pled that the insurance company had, as follows: “The company could not exercise its option to return the car to the plaintiff, without doing so. If it failed to return the car to the plaintiff, then it had not exercised its option to return it to him, but had exercised its option to keep the car. In any event, the value of the car is all that could be recovered whether they (the insurance company) returned the car or did not return the car, and the value of the car, as alleged by plaintiff, is $400.00, which is below the jurisdiction of the District Court.” Again, they urge their view in these words: “How could a person who is in possession of any article, and who has the right to retain possession of that article, and pay the value thereof to the owner, be guilty of converting the article when he does not return it to its owner? The insurer could not exercise its option to return the car to appellant, Hankey, and as long as the car is not returned to him under the contract, as alleged by appellant, the maximum amount that could be recovered was the value of the car * * *.”
The insurance company is in error in its view that the option, which plaintiff alleged that it had to return the automobile to plaintiff, could only be accepted by returning it. According to plaintiff’s pleadings, the insurance company was the optionee of the option pled. “An option is a mere offer which binds the optionee to nothing and which he may or may not accept at his election, within the time specified. Until so accepted it is not, in legal effect, a completed contract, but when accepted * * * it becomes a completed contract, binding on both parties.” 10 Tex.Jur., pp. 56, 57. Therefore, according to the allegations of plaintiff’s petition, as construed in our original opinion, the insurance company by electing not to take the title to the automobile but to return it to plaintiff, and communicating such election to plaintiff, fixed the right of plaintiff to the title and ownership of said automobile. In other words, the option, which continued to be a mere offer until the insurance company elected to pay damages and return the automobile in its damaged condition, becomes a contract to do so upon the acceptance of the offer contained in the option, and the communication to plaintiff of such acceptance by the insurance company. There is nothing in the option as pled which would prevent a verbal acceptance.
It is true that we have liberally construed the allegations of plaintiff’s petition in order to sustain the jurisdiction of the court which he sought to invoke. It is our duty to do so under the rule cited in our original opinion; and we have not *363pressed our construction beyond the reasonable intendments of the allegations of the petition. But had we reached the conclusion that the allegations asserting plaintiff’s claim to recover exemplary damages were not (to use the old phraseology) good against a general demurrer, it would still be our duty to remand the cause to permit plaintiff to amend his petition for the reason now to be stated.
■ It appears from the judgment of the trial court sustaining the plea to the jurisdiction that its language ordering the dismissal does not contain the usual “and plaintiff declining further to amend, his suit is dismissed.” But instead, the order is to the effect that the court sustained the plea to the jurisdiction, and that plaintiff “seasonably begged leave to amend * * *, and the court being of the opinion the said requests for amendment should be refused * * ordered that this suit should be dismissed. Where a plea to the jurisdiction is sustained a plaintiff should ordinarily be afforded an opportunity to amend his petition, unless it is apparent from the nature of the suit that his petition cannot be amended so as to invoke the jurisdiction of the court. The learned trial judge evidently shared the views urged by appel-lees, and quoted above. If such views are correct, the court properly declined leave to amend. But if they are incorrect, plaintiff should have been afforded an opportunity to amend.
Appellees’ motion for rehearing is refused.
Rehearing refused.