Court Opinion

ID: 9830714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:24:37.996278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:25.929497
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellants Oliver, Evans, and McDonald call our attention to the following excerpt from our opinion on original hearing, to wit:
“That some of the defendants may have suggested to the plaintiffs that the latter could telephone or see T. B. Hoffer and learn more about the amount of oil then being produced upon the lease, or that the plaintiffs failed to see Hoffer, would not. in any way preclude their right of recovery. McDonald testified that he told Hoffer not to tell any one the price paid by him to the latter for the royalty, and that Hoffer replied that it was nobody’s, business. Hence it appears, through the evidence of defendants themselves, that Hoffer was urged not to give truthful information to any inquirer with reference to this matter, and that' it would have been useless for the plaintiffs to have applied to him for the truth with reference to the matter.”
It is urged that this request by McDonald to Hoffer was made some 30 or 60 days after Hoffer had been paid the $17,500, and therefore longer after the representations made by the defendants to plaintiffs as to the price to be paid for the royalty and the amount of the daily production of oil. The record discloses that this conversation over the telephone between McDonald and Hoffer probably occurred 30 days or more after some, if not all, of the plaintiffs and the intervener subscribed for an interest in the syndicate, and we gladly make this correction. But we do not think this fact precluded the plaintiffs from their right of recovery. If the repre-sentations made by defendants to plaintiffs (hereinafter to include intervener) to induce them to invest in the enterprise, were fraudulent, and the plaintiffs relied thereon, they would have been entitled to recover in this action, though by the exercise of ordinary diligence they might have found out the truth and that such representations were false. Labbe v. Corbett, 69 Tex. 503, 6 S. W. 808; Holstein v. Adams, 72 Tex. 485, 10 S. W. 560; Hall v. Grayson County National Bank, 36 Tex. Civ. App. 317, 81 S. W. 762.
We have carefully considered appellants’ motion for rehearing, but we believe it should be overruled; and it is accordingly ordered.