Court Opinion

ID: 9829386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:16:24.48958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:00.673529
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[2] We have carefully read and considered appellees’ motion for rehearing, together with the cases therein relied upon, and are constrained to believe that they are not applicable to the point raised in this appeal. This was not a suit to reform and enforce a contract; but, on the contrary, was a suit to recover damages for breach of an alleged written contract. The original petition and the two amendments having failed to state fully the entire terms of the contract, the third amended petition undertook to do so, averring that certain portions thereof, setting the same out, were omitted through mutual mistake. Appellees contend that since this last amendment was filed more than four years after the date of the contract and the discovery of the mistake, it was barred by limitation, which it urged by its demurrer as a defense to plaintiff’s right to recover in this action. If plaintiff had brought the suit to recover damages more than four years after the breach of the contract, then it is conceded that appellees’ exception ought to have been sustained. This is not the ease, however, but, on the contrary, the suit was brought to recover damages before it was barred, but the plaintiff in its petition omitted to set out portions of the contract which it subsequently did by its amendment; and as the amendment was made four years after the cause of action arose, it is contended on- the part of appel-*797lees that the statute of limitation could be urged against it. It was not setting up or undertaking to set up a new cause of action, but merely an amplification of the original cause of action partially pleaded.
While the petition undertook to recover for a breach of the contract, it omitted to fully state what the contract really was; and plaintiff had the right, we think, by amendment, to plead the contract as it in fact existed. The allegation that a part of the contract was omitted by mutual mistake may be stricken out, and still the petition as finally amended shows a good cause of action for a breach of contract.
We therefore adhere to our original opinion in holding that the court erred in sustaining the demurrer, and overrule the motion for rehearing.
Motion overruled.