Court Opinion

ID: 9832264
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:46:22.59041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:34.147936
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
17, 8] Appellees vigorously assail this court’s original opinion herein and insist that we erred in holding that the McKenzie contract did not violate the Constitution, the city charter, or the statutes, notwithstanding no specific appropriation was made at the time of the making of the contract of any funds to pay the obligation of this particular contract. “To ‘appropriate’ is to allot, assign, set apart, apply in any way to the use of a particular person or thing for a particular purpose.” 1 Words and Phrases, First Series, 466. None of the three instruments above mentioned requires such a specific appropriation. Had they so provided, however, when the money derived from the proceeds of the flood prevention bonds were deposited by the city in its “Flood Prevention Fund,” they were, by virtue of the ordinance of December 10, 1923, mentioned in our original opinion, dedicated and appropriated to and for the particular municipal object and purpose of ameliorating flood conditions and the Olmos detention dam was a most essential unit in this program. The city commissioners became the trustees of this fund and could not lawfully divert it to any other purpose. There were funds in this special fund when the contract was made amply sufficient to discharge the city’s obligation under the contract, and it will not be presumed that the city commissioners would attempt to make flood prevention contracts calling for payments in excess of this fund. Certainly there is no evidence in the record that they did so.
Our holding is charged with being in conflict with Noel v. City of San Antonio, 11 Tex. Civ. App. 580, 33 S. W. 263, 265; City of Waco v. McNeill (Tex. Civ. App.) 29 S. W. 1109; McNeal v. City of Waco, 89 Tex. 83, 33 S. W. 322, 324; and Fourth National Bank v. City of Dallas (Tex. Civ. App.) 73 S'. W. 841. These cases were carefully examined by this court before the original opinion herein was written. In the Noel Case the present Chief Justice of this court very emphatically states that: “There is no pretense that it was a cash transaction, based on money theretofore raised on bonds voted by the taxpayers, but it is provided that the debt of $13,000 shall be paid in 10 annual payments, evidenced by promissory notes in the sum of $1,300 each, and bearing interest at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum. The whole transaction was independent of, and without reference to, any sums that may have been realized from the sale of bonds. * * * Money may have been, and doubtless was, raised by the sale ojf'bonds to erect garbage furnaces, and may have been expended for *353that purpose, but the contract shows upon its face that it was never contemplated that the furnaces in question should he paid for out of it.” In the McNeill Case, Chief Justice Fisher of the Third Court of Civil Appeals, after finding that “the petition failed to allege that at the time of the creation.of the debt any provision was made by the city for its payment,” states that “the evidence does -not show that a fund was on hand by which the city could and would pay this indebtedness without the necessity of resorting to taxation for that purpose, nor are such facts pleaded.” Justice Denman, speaking for the Supreme Court in the same case, approves the holding of Justice Fisher and very pertinently concludes that “the word ‘debt,’ as used in the constitutional provisions * * * means any pecuniary obligation imposed by contract, except such as were, at the date of the contract, within the lawful and reasonable contemplation of the parties, to be satisfied out of the current revenues for the year, or out of some fund then within the immediate control of the corporation.” In the Case Threshing Machine Company Case (Tex. Civ. App.) 218 S. W. 1, 3, suit was brought on warrants which, when made, became a burden on the future revenues of the county, but, as stated by the court, “it is not alleged that any special pro-' visions were made for levying and collecting a tax for their payment.” In the present case there were both pleading and proof that bonds had been duly voted for the purpose contemplated by the contract, that due provision had been made for their payment, and that at the date of the contract the money derived from the sale of the bonds, amply sufficient to discharge the obligation of the contract, was in a special fund within the immediate control of the city. The four eases cited by appellees announce sound and correct principles of law, but we fail to be impressed by the argument that we have conflicted therewith. They were decided on controlling facts and matters wholly different from those in the present case. The doctrine of “stare decisis” is properly applied only when the previous decision relied upon as controlling was founded upon a certain state of facts substantially the same as appears in the case in which the doctrine is invoked. This observation applies with equal force to appel-lees’ contention that our opinion is in conflict with the Supreme Court’s decision in American Construction Co. v. Seelig, 104 Tex. 16, 133 S. W. 429, with this court’s decision in Vance v. City of Pleasanton, 261 S. W. 457, and with the First Court of Civil Appeals decision in Wagner v. Porter, 56 S. W. 560.
The contract and bond were executed upon printed forms prepared by the city, which forms, together with the “Notice to Contractors,” “Instructions to Bidders,” “General Conditions of the Agreement,” and “Specifications,” all also printed and furnished by the city and bound in pamphlet form comprising thirty-three consecutively numbered pages, was furnished by the city to all bidders, it being provided in the “Instructions to Bidders” that all these documents constituted a part of the contract. The second paragraph of the “Notice to Contractors” provides that the bidder must furnish suitable guaranty that he will enter into the contract and execute bond and guaranty “on the forms provided.” Appellant complied with these instructions as to the submission of his proposal and upon the acceptance thereof by the city commissioners, as noted in our original opinion, their discretion in the matter was exhausted. There remained nothing to be done except to fill in the few blanks from data appearing in the accepted proposal and for the parties to affix their signatures to the contract provided by the city. The words used in the ordinance accepting the proposal “subject to proper and sufficient contract” can only, under the circumstances, be taken to mean and refer to the printed form of contract which the city had furnished and stipulated that the successful bidder must execute. The bond was likewise executed on the form provided by the city by sureties each of whom was authorized so to do by statute, as noted in our original opinion. Under the record herein as presented we cannot agree that the phraseology of the ordinance accepting appellant’s proposal gave the' commissioners the absolute right to veto by silence the bond. To so hold would, in our opinion, nullify and be at variance with the provisions of article 4970 of the Statutes.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.