Court Opinion

ID: 9831896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:27:33.937563+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:38.999372
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The status of the original suit in the district court of Duval county at the time of the institution of the suit in the district court of Dallas county is the first important consideration. It was during the interim between the filing dates of the third amended original petition and of the fourth amended original petition of the Sutherlands in the district court of Duval county that the Dallas Joint Stock Land Bank of Dallas filed its original petition in the district court of Dallas county. The third amended original petition, in addition to seeking delay under the Moratorium Act of 1933 (Vernon’s Ann. Oiv. St. art. 2218b), attacked, both by general allegations and by prayer for perpetual injunction; the enforceability of the debts and liens against all of the security property. As the matter thus stood, the entire field was then pre-empted.
The former appeal involved only a temporary injunction, which was granted under the third amended original petition and which extended to the Sutherlands the benefits of the Moratorium Act of 1933. This court reversed the judgment of the district court, granting the temporary injunction, on the ground of the unconstitutionality of that act. Thereafter, on June 19, 1934, the Supreme Court, probably upon the ground (if for no other reason) that the question made under that act had become moot by lapse of time, held that the temporary injunction should be dissolved except as to the homestead tract. That decision, which this court had before it on the day of and just prior to handing down the original opinion in this case, simply had the effect of removing from the case the request for delay under the act mentioned. It left, the general allegations and the prayer for perpetual injunction to be tested by demurrer or exception or to be answered on the facts. It, therefore, did not destroy the jurisdiction already invoked over the entire subject-matter.
The fourth amended original petition was not in effect less restricted than the third. The general allegations in both were substantially the same. It would serve no useful purpose to incumber the opinion with lengthy quotations or statements of the contents of those pleadings. Suffice it to say that some *294allegations challenge the right to enforce the debts and liens against all of the property. And the prayer contains a prayer for general relief. Besides the old features brought forward, this last pleading makes the allegations to come under the Moratorium Act of 1934 (Acts 43d Leg., 1934, 2d Called Sess., c. 16, Vernon’s Ann. Civ. St. art. 221Sb note), and to obtain a stay of enforcement of the entire debts and liens. Those latter allegations do not call for any expression upon the constitutionality of that act. But, taken with all the other allegations, they show that the pleading did not surrender any of the jurisdiction previously acquired by the district court of Duval county over the whole subject-matter.
The motion for rehearing is, therefore, overruled.