Court Opinion

ID: 9829888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:42:30.952829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:02:29.652889
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is accompanied by a copy of the contract in the case of Hollingsworth v. Texas Hay Association, in which case the action of the trial court in granting an injunction against the appellant’s delivering hay to any person except the appellee, Texas Hay Association, was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals for the Eirst Supreme Judicial District. The contract relied upon by the appellee in tliat case is substantially the same as the contract relied upon by the appellant in this case. No briefs were filed in that ease, but the effect of the decision was to hold the contract to be one of purchase and sale.
Application for a writ of error was made to the Supreme Court and a writ of error was refused. The only ground upon which a writ of error was sought was that the contract was in violating of section 26, art. 1, of the state Constitution. No such question was raised in or remotely involved in the instant case. None of the questions decided or discussed by this court in this case was presented to the Supreme Court in the Hollings-worth Case. This appears from a certified copy of the application for writ of error in the Hollingsworth Case, which application has been filed in this court in answer to the motion for a rehearing.
The excellent argument .made in behalf of the motion for a rehearing has not convinced us that our judgment is erroneous. Still being of the opinion that our decision is sound, we are not willing to recede from it without an expression upon it by the Supreme Court. Since our decision is in conflict with the decision of the Court of Civil Appeals for the Eirst Supreme Judicial District, and since the case seems to be one of great public interest which ought to be finally disposed of expeditiously, we have decided to overrule the motion for a rehearing for the reason that we assume a decision by the Supreme Court, will be made at an earlier date upon the writ of error, which will be granted, than if it were presented otherwise to that court.
The statement in the original opinion that appellee is repeatedly referred to in the contract as the owner is erroneous and is to be considered as withdrawn. Nowhere in the contract is appellee expressly termed the “owner.”
The effect of our decision is not to nullify the declared policy of the state expressed in the statute authorizing co-operative marketing, as appellant contends it is. Our decision merely holds that the contract is not one of purchase and sale which can be enforced either by injunction or the co-ordinate remedy of specific performance.
Appellant’s theory seems to rest exclusively on the idea that the contract is a contract of purchase and sale as distinguished from a contract of agency. It zealously presses upon us the case of Oregon Growers’ Co-operative Association v. August Lentz et al., 212 Pac. 811, recently decided by the Supreme Court of Oregon, as conclusively supporting its theory of the contract involved in this case. We do not construe the decision of the Supreme Court of Oregon as treating the contract as one exclusively of the nature of a sales contract. It seems to us that the contract construed by that court was treated rather as one of agency. The court expressly held that Lentz could not be compelled to deliver the products grown by him upon his land. The obligation was construed by the court only to the effect that if he did sell his products after he had grown them, then he was obligated to sell them to appellant, Co-operative Marketing Association; that is, he was bound to dispose of them through the marketing association as an agency of all growers who had entered into the contract, if he sold them at all. That view is quite different from the view advanced by appellant in this case, which is •that it is the absolute owner of appellee’s cotton, whenever and whereever during the period of years specified in the contract cot*1115ton is raised by him. We feel constrained to say, however, that independent of whatever view may be entertained by courts beyond this jurisdiction, we cannot depart from the conclusion we originally arrived at in this case to, the effect that the contract is not one of purchase and sale to be enforced either by injunction or specific performance.
The motion for a rehearing is ..overruled.