Court Opinion

ID: 9643645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:36:16.955716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:02.078183
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
Appellees, without conceding the correctness of this Court’s conclusions, except for the purpose of their motion for rehearing, ■now insist that in view of this Court’s holding it should now proceed to: (1) render judgment in favor of appellees, Mary Eve-lyne Spacek Chovanec, Julius R. Spacek and Ernest Schmidt in his capacity as administrator of the estaje of F. C. Schmidt, deceased, partitioning their undivided interest in the property and ordering the sale thereof by a receiver, (2) affirm the judgment of the trial court denying appellant, Joe A. Schmidt, any recovery and damages against appellee, Rosenberg State Bank, (3) affirm the judgment of the trial court in directing Joe A. Schmidt as trustee to render an accounting to appellees of the administration of his trust. All of these is-sues the appellees now contend were completely tried; are not dependent for their determination on the validity or invalidity of the trust deed and will; and by so rendering judgment this Court will be “rendering that judgment which the trial court should have rendered” within the meaning of Rule 434 T.R.C.R
With this contention we do not agree. Since Mary Evelyne Spacek Cho-vanec and Julius R. Spacek were not parties to the trust deed, their right to partition of their interest is conceded. However the finding by the trial court that the property was not susceptible of partition in kind was made upon the erroneous assumption that the entire property involved must be partitioned among" all of the litigants before the trial court. From such a 'finding it does not necessarily follow that the undivided interest of these two appellees may not be carved out of the property, leaving the remainder thereof intact and subject to the trust. The right of the administrator of the estate of F. C. Schmidt, deceased, to insist on partition depends upon the necessity thereof for the purpose of properly administering the estate, as to which the record is silent. The heirs of F. C. Schmidt, in whom the right to partition subject to administration would otherwise exist, are not determined by the trial court. The right of the appellees to require Joe Schmidt to render an accounting other than that provided for under the terms of the trust instrument, and the right of Joe Schmidt to recover damages against the bank depend upon the determination by the trial court of facts of mismanagement, waste, bad faith and other elements raised by- the pleadings but not determined by the trial court because of the erroneous theory that no trust in 'fact existed.
It thus appears that the right to the relief which appellees now seek depends upon fact issues which cannot be determined in the present state-of the -record and which should in any event be first passed upon by a court of original jurisdiction before the jurisdiction of an appellate court to review such determination can be invoked.
Accordingly, the cause must be remanded generally for retrial of those issues in accordance with our original opinion.
Appellees’ motion for rehearing is refused.