Court Opinion

ID: 9828147
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:08:57.377467+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:44.669606
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION EOR REHEARING.
We have carefully considered the motion for rehearing, but have found no reason to change our views. Counsel for appellees call our attention to the part of the opinion in which the cases of Chaison v. Beauchamp, 12 Texas Civil Appeals, 112, and Railway v. Mangum, 68 Texas, 342, are referred to, and complain that the meaning of the court is not plain. It may be that the writer was not fortunate in his effert to make his meaning clear.
In Chaison v. Beauchamp, supra, it is said: "* * * To authorize a. suit against a defendant in a county other than the one in which he has his domicile, * * * his codefendant must be a necessary as well as a proper party.” A closer inspection of the case shows that the point was not up for decision, as it was correctly held that the party urging the plea of privilege was not even a proper party to the suit. Halloway v. Blum, 60 Texas, 625, is cited in support of the proposition, but in that case the parties complaining were also held not to be proper parties.
In Railway v. Mangum, supra, it is declared that such a defendant must either be a necessary or a proper party, but the court was not called on to make the distinction. How we meant to say in the main opinion that for the purposes of this case it was immaterial which statement of the rulé was correct. Masterson being the main party to the suit and residing in the county of the former when the suit was brought, satisfied the rule as more strictly stated in the case first cited. But it is contended that while Masterson was a necessary party to the suit for debt and foreclosure he was not a necessary party to the suit for conversion.
In Cobb v. Barber, 92 Texas, 309, the suit was against the maker of a note secured by a lien on cattle, but no foreclosure was asked. Certain parties were made defendants under allegations that they had converted *596property covered by the lien given to secure the note, and judgment was asked against them for the value of the converted property. They resided in another county and made the same question as to venue and misjoinder as is made here. Whether the debtor had parted with his interest in the converted property was not alleged. The court held that they were properly joined and that the plea to the venue should have been overruled. We understand, of course, that appellees undertake to distinguish this case from that on the ground that it is a fair inference from the allegations here that Masterson had parted with his interest in the cotton alleged to have been converted. This question was left open in Cobb’s case, supra, but we decided it on appellee’s construction of the pleadings and still think our conclusion correct.
The vice in appellees’ position is the assumption that the suit for conversion can not be joined with a suit on the debt, losing sight of the fact that the latter is the basis of the lien which gives the plaintiff the right to maintain the action for conversion.
In Cobb’s case, supra, on which appellees rely, the suit was so joined. In the case cited Justice Brown says: “Our system does not favor the bringing of a multiplicity of suits, and therefore permits all causes of action growing out of the same transaction to be joined and all interests in the same property or fund to be litigated and the equities of the parties adjusted in the same suit.” It is apparent that an application of this rule to the case at hand would further this policy of the law. It may safely be said that a fair construction of the pleadings authorizes the inference that Masterson delivered the cotton to the appellants to go as a credit upon the second mortgage and that appellants so received it. If the first lien had been satisfied or if the debt 'did not in fact exist, appellees had no cause of action. These questions could be properly litigated only in a suit to which Masterson was a party. But they were also necessarily involved in the suit for conversion. If the debt was less than the value of the converted property the recovery against appellants could not exceed the debt. If it was more than the value of the property the recovery could not exceed the property. In this view of the case we were struck with the force of Judge James’ remarks quoted at length in the main opinion.
If the property was in the hands of appellants without the assent of Masterson it would amount to a technical conversion, and both he and the lienholders might so treat it. They might also proceed against the property itself. But it is apparent that the actual difference between a proceeding against the property in the hands of appellants and an action for its conversion is so slight that their attitude toward the parties and the actual result is practically the same. Yet if the cotton was existent and in the hands of appellants, and they were asserting a claim thereto, the right of appellees to join them in this suit could not be questioned. We do not think the technical common law rule that a suit for tort can not be joined with a suit upon contract has under our system any application to cases' of this sort.
*597In this view of the case and in the light of the case of Cobb v. Barber, supra, we regard it as immaterial whether the petition is sufficient to sustain a judgment for foreclosure or not.
The motion is overruled.

Overruled.

Writ of error refused.