Court Opinion

ID: 9829950
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:45:01.688639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:09.310287
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
We have carefully examined appellee’s motion for a rehearing and have concluded that the same should be overruled, and it has been so ordered.
 To the end that there may be no misapprehension of our decision, we have deemed it well to add that we recognize the rule stated in Cotton v. Thompson, 159 S. W. 460,. and in Loan Association v. Biering, 86 Tex. 476, 25 S. W. 622, 26 S. W. 39, that each payment made upon a contract effected with usury is a payment of the principle, applied by law, notwithstanding it was paid and received as payment of interest. The testimony in the record shows that appellee paid to appellant, in the way of interest, sums of money sufficient to discharge the amount of the principal several times over. If the contract was usurious, and the various transactions thereafter between the parties were 'merely renewals of the original loan, the principal had been paid long before the loan in question was applied for and obtained, and had the last transaction been merely an extension at that time of the sum claimed to be due as the principal of the debt, the extension would not have been a sufficient consideration for the execution of the release. But in this ease appellants’ agent testified that he made a new loan to appellee, and that the release was executed in consideration of the new loan. The trial court made no finding on this point, nor as to whether the release was in fact executed by appellee. If this testimony is true, and the release was executed in consideration of the making of a new loan to appellee, the release would be binding upon him and preclude his recovery. This ruling is in harmony with Stout v. Bank, 69 Tex. 392, 8 S. W. 808, and in accord with principle.