Court Opinion

ID: 9832312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:48:05.666702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:45.425398
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[7] In the recent case of Vogt v. Smalley (Com. App.) 210 S. W. 511, by ¡the Commission of Appeals, and adopted by the Supreme Court, it was held that the measure of damages for the shortage in a tract of land which Vogt had sold to Smalley for the agreed purchase price of $15 per acre, and which Smal-ley had been induced to purchase by the fraudulent misrepresentations of Vogt that the tract contained 624 acres when in fact but 544 were included in the conveyance, was the difference between the price paid by Smalley and the value of what he actually received as of the date of the sale with interest. That decision followed the decision of the same -court in the leading case of George v. Hesse, 100 Tex. 44, 93 S. W. 107, 8 L. R. A. (N. S.) 804, 123 Am. St. Rep. 772,15 Ann. Cas. 456, which involved a trade in which the parties exchanged properties, and not a conveyance for money paid.
It is well settled that, generally speaking and for most purposes, rules applicable to suits for relief based upon fraud and deceit apply likewise to those predicated upon mutual mistake, and there can be no escape from the conclusion that the rule for measuring *734damages resulting from fraud, announced by the Supreme Court in the case noted above, is applicable to the first count in plaintiff’s petition in the present suit presenting mutual mistake, and upon which the judgment of the trial court was predicated.
As noted in our original opinion, it appears that the trial court held that the measure of plaintiff’s damages was the value of the shortage of 14 acres at the date of plaintiff’s purchase, which the jury found to be $1,400. That finding of the jury was challenged by appellants in one assignment of error as having no support in the evidence, in that the county surveyor, Mack Burtleson, who was the only witness who testified on that issue, testified as follows upon cross-examination by defendants, after qualifying as an expert on the values of land in that vicinity:
“In my judgment this particular 14 acres of land outside of the fence, with reference to the value of the whole land in the tract, on August, 1918, was worth less in proportion than the rest of the place, because it did not have any improvements on it. In my opinion the reasonable cash market value in 1913 of the 14 acres, considered alone, supposing a person owned the 114 acres and wanted to buy the 14 acres, was $70 per acre.”
But on redirect examination by plaintiff’s counsel he testified as follows:
“If this 114 acres of land had contained 14 more acres, that is 128, and this extra 14 acres had been similar to the rest of the land in the field of 114 acres, in my "judgment the market value of the whole taken together, would have been $100 per acre.”
The trial court by a special igsue told the jury to “find the yalue of that 14 acres at the time of sale” ; and in answer thereto the jury found it to be worth $100 per acre. Thus it will be seen that under the issue submitted the jury could have found the value of the land to be $100 per acre if the tract purchased had included the 14 acres shortage, or they could have found its value to be $70 per acre considered alone, and supposing a purchaser owning the 114 acres desired to buy the 14 acres additional. And there was no request for an instruction to the jury to find separate values of the 14 acres as estimated by the witness Burtleson. Under such circumstances, we cannot say, as insisted by appellants, that the finding of the jury that the 14 acres was worth $100 per acre is unsupported, by the evidence, since it may be, and it is reasonable to so presume, that the jury intended to place that value on the land in the same manner and for the same reason that witness Burtleson estimated it.
[8] However, the first count in plaintiff’s petition, in which a recovery was sought upon allegations of mutual mistake of the parties in supposing the tract sold to contain 128 acres instead of 114 acres, and in trading upon that assumption, contained no allegation of the value of the 14 acres, and therefore the testimony referred to with respect to the value of the shortage was not available to plaintiff for a recovery of such value as the measure of his damages. ’But, as shown in our original opinion we concluded that as the jury found that the sale was by the acre, and, as the evidence conclusively showed that the agreed purchase price was $100 per acre, that sum would be' the measure of plaintiff’s damages. But we are now convinced that under the decision of the Supreme Court in Vogt v. Smalley that conclusion was erroneous, and that the proper measure of plaintiff’s damages in the present suit is the same as that announced in that case.
One of the special exceptions addressed to plaintiff’s petition is paragraph I in defendants’ ianswer, which reads as follows:
“Because said petition fails to allege .that the deed fromi defendants to plaintiff was made or accepted by or through fraud, accident, or mistake, nor that the description contained in the deed does not contaiA 128 acres of land, nor where the shortage is located or the value thereof.”
Appellant’s tenth assignment reads as follows :
“Because the court erred in overruling and in not sustaining the defendants’ special exception (1) because the allegation in plaintiff’s petition, based alone upon mutual mistake as to acreage, nor where the shortage is located, or the value as a whole or per acre of the alleged shortage in the actual possession of Mrs. Ellen Helm; and because the plaintiff’s measure of damages, if any he ever had, would be the reasonable cash market value of the 14 acres shortage alleged by him to be in the actual possession of Mrs. Ellen Helm, and which said petition shows to have never been delivered to nor in possession of the plaintiff.”
[9] It thus appears that the special exception addressed to plaintiff’s petition did-present the exception that the value of the 14-acre shortage was not alleged. It further appears that counsel for the defendants, both in the trial court and in this court, was of the opinion that the value of the shortage was the correct measure of plaintiff’s damages if he was entitled to recover upon his plea of mutual mistake. But by no assignment of error have appellants presented the contention that the measure of plaintiff’s damages should be determined by the rule announced in the decisions noted above, nor was there either pleading or proof in the trial court to warrant that application of that rule. The record shows that the defendants’ special exception, copied above, was presented to the trial court and overruled. Hence it cannot be said that the exception was waived. However, since plaintiff’s petition contained no allegation of the value of the 14 acre.s shortage, and since the trial court adopted such value as the measure of damages without any pleading to support it, we feel constrained to grant appellants’ motion for rehearing *735and to reverse and remand the case for a new trial, notwithstanding the rule for measuring plaintiff’s áamages as announced in Vogt v. Smalley has not been invoked by appellants as the correct rule.
■Rehearing granted, and judgment- of the trial court reversed and the cause remanded'.