Court Opinion

ID: 9834062
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:16:16.140561+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:11.352070
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellants have presented an exceptionally forceful motion for a rehearing, and request additional findings in event the motion for rehearing be overruled.
While frorii the face of the motion it may not appear that we were clearly right in all the views expressed in our original opinion, we, nevertheless, do not feel prepared to now reverse them. This is expressly true as to the issue of notice to appellees of the asserted rights of appellants. As we view the evidence, no statement or fact brought to the knowledge of appellees is sufficient to cause a man of ordinary care and prudence to doubt the title they were getting. The record title showed a conveyance of all title of. every character in R. E. Hill and appellants to the Texas Company, subject only to the terms of an optional agreement to re-convey which had expired, thus investing the Texas Company with full authority to convey title to whomsoever and upon such terms as it pleased. The conversations with R. E. Hill, Edwin- Hill, and the other instruments of the record title were not out of harmony, as it seems to us, with the legal effect of the conveyance to the Texas Company and the option agreement. If these instruments were as they purported to be, it was immaterial that the property involved was theretofore the separate property of the mother of appellants, for in that event all interest in appellants, whatever it was, passed out of them.
The additional findings requested are numerous. In some instances they present views of the evidence with which we cannot concur; in other instances evidence is referred to which should be read in connection with other evidence to be found in the record in order to avoid a misleading effect, and to now undertake to segregate, add, and discuss such explanatory evidence would extend our opinion, perhaps already too long. Indeed, it may well be said that we could, and perhaps should, have disposed of this case by the simple statement and conclusion that the evidence had been examined and considered and that we thought it justified the trial court’s peremptory instruction, for the vital questions for determination were questions of law and not of fact. The question is, Does the evidence introduced, together with that offered, raise the vital issue? If it does, the court should have permitted the case to go to the jury. There is and can be no'dispute as to just what evidence was heard and what was offered to enable our Supreme Court to review our action or that of the trial court. We shall assume that that court will, in the orderly performance of its functions, necessarily read and consider the evidence referred to and correct any misstatement, material omission, or error we may have made.
The motion for rehearing and the motion for additional findings are accordingly overruled.