Court Opinion

ID: 9829960
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:45:16.092237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:09.453608
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In our original opinion we were in error in stating that appellants had filed disclaimers of title to the east half of A. O. H. & B. Railway Survey No. 4 claimed by Mrs. McCarty. Hence it becomes necessary to discuss the merits of appellant’s1 assignments Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11. Mrs. McCarty 'filed a plea over against appellant B. F. Whitaker in the form of trespass to try title to recover that land. To this plea over B. F. Whitaker filed a plea of general denial and not guilty. No issue was joined between Mrs. McCarty and appellant Cannon relative to this land. Cannon did not claim the land, and neither did Mrs. McCarty seek to recover from him.
[4] By the ninth assignment of error complaint is made of the admission in evidence of a certified copy of a certificate from the Commissioner of the General Land Office that W. G. McCarty had filed proof of residence and occupancy of the land for three consecutive years, as required by the statute, and that the land was originally sold to J. F. Speer. One objection made to the admission of that testimony was because “it is only secondary and admissible only after the best evidence has been accounted for.” There were other, grounds of objection, but the one just stated is the only ground of objection assigned in the proposition submitted under the assignment now under discussion. By article 5445, Rev. Statutes 1911, such a certificate from the Land Commissioner is expressly made a muniment of title permitted to be recorded by the county clerk; and by article 3700 of Revised Statutes a certified copy of any instrument affecting title to land is made admissible in evidence when the predicate therein prescribed is complied with. There is nothing to show that the proper predicate had not been laid for the introduction of this certified copy , rather than the original. Hence the assignment is overruled.
[5] If the cards issued by the Commissioner of the General Land Office and mentioned in the seventh and eighth assignments of error were improperly admitted in evidence, the error was harmless, as the certificate of the Land Commissioner mentioned above was sufficient prima facie to show title out of the state. Binion v. Harris, 32 Tex. Civ. App. 371, 74 S. W. 580.
[6] According to the decision in Jones v. Wagner, 141 S. W. 280, the excerpts from the Abstract of Texas Land Titles, shown in the fifth and sixth assignments of error, were admissible. By statute it is made the duty of the Land Commissioner to publish abstracts for patented title and surveyed lands. Article 5389, Revised Statutes 1911. A writ of error in the ease of Jones v. Wagner, supra, was denied by our Supreme Court, as shown in 142 S. W. xxxvii. But even though it be said that that decision is in conflict with the decision of our Supreme Court in Bassett v. Martin, 83 Tex. 339, 18 S. W. 587, and erroneous, nevertheless the error in admitting such abstract was harmless, as the same fact shown by this evidence was established by the certificate of the Land Commissioner of proof of occupancy of the land for the period of three years, as shown above. And, with that proof properly in the record, the transfer from C. M. Speer to W. G. McCarty, mentioned in the sixth assignment of error, and the deed from W. G. McCarty to J. J. McCarty, mentioned in the eleventh asL signment of error, were properly admitted, and the peremptory instruction requested by appellants and referred to in the tenth assignment of error was properly refused.
Motion overruled.