Court Opinion

ID: 9834236
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:25:55.303653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:13.126282
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
By motion for rehearing appellants complain of our finding that more than four years intervened between the date of the rendition of the judgment in the partition suit brought by J. V. Hinkle against Andrew Ward and others, to wit, February 19, 1916, and the date on which the plaintiffs’ original petition in the present suit was filed, and our conclusion based upon such finding that the attack made by appellants upon such judgment was, at the time said original petition was filed, barred by the four-year statute of limitation pleaded by appellees.
After an examination of the facts pointed out by appellants in said motion for the first time, we find that we were in error in the findings and conclusions complained of in said motion. These errors on our part were induced, however, by the failure of the plaintiffs, appellants here, to comply with rule 13. (142 S. W. xviii) prescribed for the district and county courts of this state, and by the.*241unchallenged statement In appellees’ brief as follows:
“This is a suit as contended by appellee filed on the 21st day of November, 1921, to set aside a judgment rendered in the district court of Brazoria county, Tex., on the 19th day of February, 1916, in which all the parties to this suit, except the heirs of Amanda Lee and Neely Williams, were parties.”
It was shown, as stated by us in our original opinion, that the judgment in said partition suit was rendered on the 19th day of February, 1916. The only petition found in the transcript, the first amended petition, is shown to have been filed on the 21st day of November, 1921, almost six years after the rendition of the judgment in the partition suit, which is attacked by the plaintiffs in the present suit. The showing thus made gave strength ■ to the assertion of appellees that four years had intervened between the two dates mentioned; we are therefore led to believe that the attack made on the judgment in the partition suit was barred by the four-year statute of limitation. Notwithstanding the fact that appellees had pleaded the statute of limitation and were insisting that said judgment was barred by limitation, appellant made no contention by assignment that such plea and contention was not supported by the evidence, nor was our attention otherwise directly called to the fact that appellants’ contention was unsupported by the evidence; in, other words, our attention was not called to the statement of facts showing the date of the filing of the original petition in the present suit. Our attention is now, for the first time, by the motion for rehearing, directed to the fact that said original petition was filed on the 19th day of February, 1919, only three years after the rendition of the judgment attacked, and as a consequence the plea of limitation in bar of appellants’ attack on the same cannot be sustained.
We take this opportunity to advise counsel that such errors as were committed by us, as stated above, would no dioubt be avoided in the future if rule 13 hereinbefore cited was complied with, which provides that amended petitions shall give the date of the originals for which they are substituted.
The appellate courts of our state have repeatedly stated that the purpose for rule 13 was to preserve upon the face of the récord proper evidence of the history of the cause without resort to abandoned pleadings, and that a compliance with such rule will furnish all information necessary to determine when the original petition was in fact filed. T. & N. O. Ry. Co. v. Speights, 94 Tex. 350, 60 S. W. 659; Continental Fruit Exp. v. Leas, 50 Tex. Civ. App. 584, 110 S. W. 130; Moody v. Moeller, 72 Tex. 635, 10 S. W. 727, 13 Am. St. Rep. 839.
While we have now reached the conclusion that we erred in holding that appellants’ attack upon the judgment rendered in the partition suit brought by J. V. Hinkle against Andrew Ward and others were barred by the statute of limitation, we see no reason to set aside the judgment rendered by us on this appeal, as it is, we think, supported upon other grounds expressed in the opinion.
We therefore refuse the motion for rehearing.