Court Opinion

ID: 9675508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:55:53.964329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:35.020044
License: Public Domain

On Second Motion for Rehearing
On appellant’s second motion for rehearing, the opinion of this Court on his fir^i motion for rehearing is attacked because we therein stated “We cannot take judicial notice of the provisions of the charter of the City of Houston generally, but only of *804such parts thereof which were placed in evidence.”
Appellant refers us to Article 1174 of Vernon’s Annotated Revised Civil Statutes, which is applicable to “home rule” cities and provides that courts shall be required to take judicial notice of provisions of a city charter as a public act when the same or any amendment thereof shall have been recorded at length upon the records of the city, in a separate book kept for that purpose in the office of the city secretary (or other officer exercising like or similar powers), following the adoption and approval thereof pursuant to the provisions of law. Appellant attaches to his motion a bound volume entitled “Charter of the City of Houston,” shown on its cover to have been published by authority of its City Council. In the volume there are provisions relative to ordinances granting a franchise or any right to use “property of the City of Houston, * * * and all other public places and property”, providing generally that any such must be read in full at three regular meetings of the Council. The objective of appellant is to show us that in the event the transaction entered into between the City of Houston and Messrs. Dervas and Bellesiotis is to be termed a franchise or license, it was violative of the provisions of the charter just as it was contended to be under the theory that it amounted to a lease of the City’s real estate.
We are of the opinion that we have reached the correct result in our original opinion. The record does not show that the charter’s provisions have been recorded in the manner prescribed by the article and provided as a prerequisite to judicial notice. This court could perhaps embark upon an independent course of inquiry in the matter in the determination of the question, but we are not obliged so to do. In the trial court the appellant couched his case upon the theory that the transaction was a lease of the City’s real estate. The trial court had notice upon the trial of the provisions of the charter relative to leases of real estate. Appellant’s petition referred to the charter and copied these provisions in full and it is obvious that the trial judge accepted such as part of the charter without additional requirement of proof, or without requiring proof that the provisions were part of a public act. It does not appear, however, that the trial judge took judicial notice of provisions of the entire charter, nor of any provisions other than those relative to the leasing of real estate. That having been done, their status was exactly the same as that of a fact in evidence.
Our holding should not be distorted in order to contend that we held the transaction between the City of Houston and Messrs. Dervas and Bellesiotis to be either a license or a franchise, for we expressly stated that we did not do so. We did not intend to do more than hold that under the circumstances of the case the accomplishment of the transaction was not to be enjoined upon the premise that it was a lease. Nor does the fact that counsel for both parties proceeded upon the assumption that it was a lease as contemplated by charter bind this court upon a like assumption. Appellant carried the burden in the trial court and since his case was founded upon the contention that the transaction amounted to a lease, he was required to discharge his burden. Had he discharged the burden, or had the facts and circumstances been eliminated as a question and in themselves established the transaction as a lease, then it would have been proper for us to proceed to the other legal questions raised by appellant’s points of error. The appellant having failed in such respect, we cannot here permit him for the first time to seek like injunctive relief under an alternative theory not advanced in the court below. Even though he be entitled to relief under such a theory, our jurisdiction could be invoked only after proper preliminary proceedings thereon had received attention in a trial court.
Appellant’s second motion for rehearing is overruled.