Court Opinion

ID: 9834447
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:36:10.528146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:15.566574
License: Public Domain

On Behearing.
It is earnestly insisted that we erred in holding the evidence of waiver relied upon by appellant was not available because not pleaded.
We assumed that there was no plea of waiver, and predicated this assumption upon the fact that the transcript of the record from the justice court contains a full and complete notation of the defensive matter pleaded by appellant, and nothing therein contained would indicate that a waiver was pleaded.
[3, 4] It is, of course, true that pleadings in the justice court being oral are necessarily informal in their nature, and a very wide latitude is observed in favor of the sufficiency of such pleading. But notwithstanding this liberality which is indulged in their favor, it does not entirely dispense with the necessity of pleadings. And if the defendant relies upon a special defense he must in some way raise it by his pleadings, and the appellant having noted the substance of his pleadings upon the justice court docket, and the same wholly failing to raise any issue of a waiver, we must hold that in that court at least there was no plea of waiver upon which any such defense -could be predicated. He could amend his pleading in the county court and could there plead orally, but there is no affirmative showing here that the case in the county court was tried upon any pleadings other than those in the justice court, unless it be inferentially shown by the findings of fact and -conclusions of law of the trial court, wherein he passes upon the question of waiver. It occurs to us that if the appellant amended his pleadings in the county court so as to raise issues not raised by the pleadings in the justice court, the record should in some way affirmatively show the new issues raised by the amendment.
But we have waived these considerations in the instant case, and have, upon the rehearing, examined the evidence relied upon, and have reached the -conclusion that the trial court correctly held there was no waiver upon the part of appellee of the provisions of the contract of sale which limited to 30 days appellant’s right to return the meters.
The motion for rehearing is' therefore overruled.