Court Opinion

ID: 9832408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:53:15.36616+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:46.484865
License: Public Domain

On Appellee’s Motion for Rehearing.
 We have reached the conclusion that we were in error in dismissing the cause.
“At common law, a suit, when abated, is absolutely dead; but, in equity, a suit, when abated, is (if such an expression be allowable) merely in a state of suspended animation, and it may be revived.” Life Ass’n of America v. Goode, 71 Tex. 90, 8 S. W. 639, 640.
The identical, situation we have here was presented in Long v. Long (Tex. Civ. App.) 269 S. W. 207, 210, from the opinion in which we quote: “To sustain appellant’s plea in abatement does not mean that appellee is forced to assert her cause of action by cross-bill in the district court of Briscoe county. She may do this if she chooses. Charlton v. Charlton (Tex. Civ. App.) 141 S. W. 290; Rules 6 and 7 for district and county courts. Neither does it mean that she must aban*894don her suit, for it is'clearly within the discretion of the trial court, as a court of equity, instead of dismissing the-suit to suspend proceedings therein until the termination of the suit having priority, and, when the cause of abatement is removed, the suit may be revived if anything is left to litigate. 1 O. J. 27, § 2.”
Under the practice in this state the same rule of practice should apply to a case at law as to a cause in equity, as regards abatement under a plea of another suit pending. The instant suit being one to foreclose a trust deed would in the absence of governing statute be classed as an equity proceeding in those jurisdictions where law and equity are administered in separate courts.
Our former judgment is therefore modified so as hereafter to read:
The trial court’s judgment is reversed, and the cause is abated and remanded to the ' trial court with instructions to retain it suspended upon the docket until the Coleman county suit is determined, and thereupon to proceed in accordance with the final result of that suit. In all other respects the motion for rehearing is overruled.
Granted in part and in part overruled.