Court Opinion

ID: 9825246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 12:23:18.542799+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:02:27.164028
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
When this case was before this court on its original submission it received our careful consideration. We wrote to what impressed us as being the controlling and decisive question in the case. We pretermitted any discussion of several questions assigned and argued as error for the very obvious reason that under our view of the controlling question a decision on those other questions would not affect the result. The enormous amount of work required of this court by,the large number of appeals we are called on to consider, together with the rights of litigants to have their causes promptly disposed of, may furnish some excuse, if not complete justification, for our effort to devote our attention in the main to the controlling question made by the records submitted to us.
With all the forms of action and pleading-available to her that the law of Alabama afforded, the appellee selected form 25, in section 9531 of the 1923 Code. The limitations under that form were pointed out in Singer Sewing Machine Co. v. Hayes, 22 Ala. App. 250, 114 So. 420. No good reason appears why we should recede from what was there said. Had the appellee in this case by appropriate averments complained of the use of unlawful force, in the exercise of a legal right, instead of limiting herself to a claim of a “wrongful taking” of the property, a different proposition would be up for consideration.
On submission the appellee placed some motions, in writing, in the transcript to strike certain exhibits from the record. These motions appear on legal cap paper and not on the motion docket of this court as the rules of practice require. For that reason alone, the court need not have considered the motions to strike. However, under the decision of the Supreme Court in Kilby Car & Foundry v. Georgia Casualty Co., 209 Ala. 356, 96 So. 319, it appears that the motions are without merit. The exhibits sought to be stricken by the motions a,re incorporated in the bill of exceptions. They were numbered Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2, and so on when they were offered and admitted in evidence and are so numbered in the bill of exceptions. The identification is sufficient.
Under the case of Interstate Lumber Co. v. Duke, 183 Ala. 484, 62 So. 845, evidence offered by appellant tending to show good faith on the part of.appellant in taking the property involved was admissible and its exclusion was reversible error.
The appellee takes exception to the statement in our original opinion that the mortgage on the property was in default at the time the property was taken. The mortgage was due on September 1, 1932. The alleged trespass occurred on April 26, 1932. We confused the date on some lease contracts with the date on the mortgage, and we find in this respect we were in error and that the learned counsel for appellee is correct. How'-ever, this cannot change our conclusion that the judgment must be reversed. As to the property covered by the lease sale contracts, what we said in the original opinion stands, and error intervened in the refusal of the charges made the basis of seventy-fourth and seventy-sixth assignments of error.
Further treatment of the numerous assignments of error is deemed unnecessary.
The application for rehearing is overruled.