Court Opinion

ID: 9830631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:20:21.558606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:25.027159
License: Public Domain

On Appellant’s Motion for Rehearing.
On consideration of appellant’s motion for rehearing, we conclude that we were in error in affirming the judgment. Appellee was given a judgment, among other things, for the value of the vendor’s-lien notes transferred to Addicks by appellant, as shown in our original opinion, with a foreclosure of a vendor’s lien upon all property conveyed by Robertson to Baker under the terms of the agreement between them, with an order of *328execution for the enforcement of the judgment so rendered. We think this was error, for the reason that it is undisputed that, in the exchange of properties between the parties, Robertson assumed the $4,000 indebtedness upon the storehouse situated in Morgan, Tex., and it seems evident that appellant’s contract to transfer to appellee the $3,100 vendor’s lien notes that had theretofore been indorsed to Addicks was for the purpose of reducing pro tanto appellee’s assumption of the $4,000 indebtedness. Both parties knew that the notes had been indorsed to Addicks, and that Addicks held them either as collateral security for the $4,000 indebtedness, or under an agreement to collect the $3,100 vendor’s lien notes and apply the proceeds to such indebtedness; hence it must have been understood at the time of the exchange of the properties between appellant and appellee that appellant could not make a transfer of these notes to appellee in any other sense than that appellee was to receive the benefit of appellant’s contract with Baker. In other words, that appellee was to be, as it were, substituted to the rights of appellant in the contract with Addicks. If, therefore, Ad-dicks should collect the $3,100 vendor’s lien notes and apply the proceeds to the extin-guishment of the $4,000 indebtedness assumed by appellee, appellee, in effect, would receive the full benefit of the vendor’s lien notes as effectually as if, in fact, they had at the time been formally indorsed and delivered to him. For aught that the record shows us, Addicks may have or soon shall collect these notes, and may have or soon shall apply the proceeds to the extinguishment pro tanto of the $4,000 indebtedness owned by him, and it would therefore be inequitable for the judgment to be so framed as to authorize the appellee not only to receive the benefit of the $3,100 notes, and also to recover a judgment for their value against appellant and secure satisfaction out of the property transferred to him under the terms of the agreement between them.
In order to correct. this error, if all the parties were before u¡3, it would only be necessary to reform the judgment so as to provide that execution should not issue in behalf of appellee for the collection of that part of the judgment resting upon the $3,100 vendor’s lien notes in event Addicks complied with his agreement as to the application of their proceeds, but Addicks is not a party to - this suit, and the judgment, therefore, cannot bind him. We think, therefore, that the judgment should be reversed, in order that Addicks may be made a party to the end that the relative rights not only of appellant and appellee, but also of Addicks and the trustee in bankruptcy, may be determined.
Accordingly it is ordered that the motion for rehearing be granted, and the judgment reversed, and the cause remanded.