Court Opinion

ID: 9827612
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:42:04.911409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:33.796801
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Appellant calls our attention to an inaccuracy in our original opinion. The case of Ablowich v. Bank which reached the Supreme Court, and from the opinion in which we quoted, seems to have come through the Dallas Court of Appeals instead of the Fort Worth court. There must have been another trial of the case decided in the opinion by Chief Justice Conner and mentioned by us in our original opinion. We have been unable to locate the opinion of the Dallas court in the case, and counsel for appellant have likewise been unable to locate same; but it appears that one must have been rendered. This matter is immaterial, because our opinion was in no sense based upon what the Supreme Court stated in that case; but, as stated in the opinion, upon our interpretation of the holding in the case of Lane Co. v. Crum (Tex. Com. App.) 291 S. W. 1084. However, we are glad to correct the inaccurate statement.
Our. attention is called to the opinion by Justice Greenwood of the Supreme Court in the case of J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co. v. Howth, 293 S. W. 800, and the argument is made that, since the Supreme Court regards article 574 as being stiU in force, it cannot be assumed that that court intended to overrule, in the case of Lane Co. v. Crum, supra, the opinion of Chief Justice Gaines in the case of McCormick v. Kampmann, 102 Tex. 215, 115 S. W. 24. Upon what theory the Supreme Court held that the holder in due course of the instruments described in the case of Lane Co. v. Crum was not protected it is not our province to speculate. It may be that the defense there was not a want or failure or partial failure of consideration, although a careful reading of the opinion in that case leads us to believe that such was the defense. Regardless of whether or not it could be technically so denominated, we think that case is so similar to the case under consideration as that it is controlling upon us. We therefore based our decision upon the authority of that case.
We are of the opinion that the appellant is not protected as an innocent holder of the instrument described in the original opinion under the decision of McCormick v. Kampmann, supra, for several reasons. By the wording of its assignment appellant acquired only such interest as Ridgeway & Bruton had in the instrument, and further, the instrument showed on its face that something remained to be done and carried on its face a guaranty of quality. By its provisions it was subject to defenses and offsets in the event the machinery described therein failed to meet certain requirements. The opinion of Justice Gaines, as we construe it, cannot be given the effect of depriving the maker of an instrument of the defenses and offsets disclosed by its very terms. We did not base our opinion upon these grounds, because we conceived it to be our duty to follow the latest expression of the Supreme Court on the subject; and, .construing the decision in the case of Lane Company v. Crum to be an authority for affirming the judgment of the trial court, we based it upon that ground alone. But since appellant insists that our decision is in conflict with the decision of Chief Justice Gaines in the Kaupmann Case, we have indicated our views more fully.
The motion for rehearing will be overruled.