Court Opinion

ID: 9760077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:40:07.502016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:08.153397
License: Public Domain

MORRISON, Presiding Judge,
(dissenting).
I would grant the writ of prohibition under the authority of State ex rel. Flowers v. Woodruff, 150 Texas Cr. Rep. 255, 200 S.W. 2d 178, which was the authority under which we granted leave to file the application.
My brethren now deny the relief prayed for and, in the final analysis, base their holding on only two cases. State ex rel Bergeron v. Travis County, supra (Harper, J.,), was a bawdy house case and merely holds that where the defendant does not object to the jurisdiction of the court at the outset then it is not obligatory that the appellate court grant the writ of prohibition. Such holding does not in anywise hamper the power or the duty of this Court to grant the writ in this case. Dibrell v. City of Coleman, supra (the second case), was decided by the Austin Court of Civil Appeals in 1915 and held that an ordinance of Coleman which prohibited the keeping of hogs within the city was void.
Later, in Malone v. City of Houston 278 S.W. 2d 204, the Galveston Court of Civil Appeals in 1955 expressly disagreed with the holding in Dibrell, saying:
“The law appears settled in Texas that equity will not enjoin criminal proceedings or attempt to stay the hands of police officers in enforcing criminal law except where the law attempted to be enforced is unconstitutional and void and its enforcement will result in irreparable injury to vested property rights. State ex rel Flowers v. Woodruff, 150 Texas Cr. Rep. 255, 200 S.W. 2d 178; Kemp Hotel Operating Co. v. City of Wichita Falls, 141 Texas 90, 170 S.W. 2d 217; Stecher v. City of Houston, Texas Civ. App., Galveston, 272 S.W. 2d 925 (app. ref. N.R.E.).”
In the present case, the majority opinion does not pass upon the constitutionality of the ordinance in question, but expressly refrains from so doing. And there are no facts before us which show “the infliction of irreparable injury to vested property rights.”
Error was refused by our Supreme Court in Malone, and I think we should follow the holding in that case.
*214The urbanization of this State since Dibrell was decided has rendered such holding obsolete, as will be seen from an examination of our opinion in Ex parte Naylor, 157 Texas Cr. Rep. 355, 249 S.W. 2d 607.
I respectfully dissent.