Court Opinion

ID: 9830575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:17:40.230871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:24.446186
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
On December 2, 1911, in a written opinion, this court, speaking through the writer, reversed and remanded this cause hold-*985lug that Act 1905, p. 35, had no application to the facts in this case, and also holding that the pleading first filed by appellant on January 2, 1906, and copied in the original opinion, was sufficient as a cross-action to remove cloud from title, and that, therefore, the trial court erred in excluding evidence tendered by appellant which tended to show that Williams’ title was invalid.
[9] The case is now before us on appellee’s motion for rehearing, in which our attention for the first time is called to the case of Wyerts v. Terrell et al., 100 Tex. 409, 100 S. W. 133, and in which it is also for the first time pointed out that the lands claimed by appellant in his said cross-action as therein described are other and different lands than those awarded to appellee’s ancestor, and for which this suit was brought. In the case of Wyerts v. Terrell, supra, Wyerts had made application to purchase the lands in controversy in that suit prior to the act of 1905 becoming operative, but failed to institute any suit for the land for more than a year after the act became operative against Mrs. Swan, to whom the Commissioner of the General Land Office had awarded the land prior to Wyerts mating application to purchase same. In our original opinion in this case we held that the act of 1905 did not apply as a bar against those whose rights had arisen before the act became operative, but in the Wyerts Case the Supreme Court of this state places a different construction on that act, and in speaking through Justice Williams uses this language: “Some questions are made by relator as to the validity of the reinstatement of the contract of sale under which correspondents claim, but we are of the opinion that they cannot now be made by him. More than a year elapsed before the institution of this proceeding after the act of 1905 prescribing the time in which persons, such as relator, may attack sales of school lands made to others took effect. We think the statute applies to the ease, and 'bars the remedy sought.” And as the facts in that case, in so far as the legal question involved is concerned, are identical with the facts in this case, in deference to the opinion of the Supreme Court, as we construe it and as announced in that case, we now hold that the act of 1905, on page 35, does apply to this case.
[10] In disposing of this case originally, our attention was not called by either party to the suit in pleadings, briefs, or otherwise to the fact that the pleading on which appellant relies to prevent the bar provided for in the act of 1905 fails to show that appellant has any kind of interest in the lands sued for by appellees’ ancestor, and in disposing of the appeal we assumed without critical examination of the lands claimed by appellant and described in his cross-action were the same as those sued for by appellees. An inspection of said plea, however, shows that appellant therein claims a right to purchase or to have purchased survey No. 48, in block C-3, D. & P. Ry. Co., as a home, and survey 54, block C-3, E. L. & R. R. Ry. Co., as additional land, while an inspection of appellees’ pleadings, as well as the judgment rendered below, show that appellees were claiming the right and title to survey No. 48, block C-3, E. L. '& R. R. Ry. Co. lands and survey No. 54, block C-3, D. & P. Ry. Co. lands, thus showing that appellees sued for and claimed different lands altogether from those in which appellant in his cross-action claimed any right or interest.
We have examined the statement of facts, and find therefrom that appellant introduced on the trial below without any objection applications made by him to the Commissioner of the General Land Office to purchase the lands sued for by appellees; in fact, the entire record tends strongly to show that appellant through inadvertence misdescribed in his cross-action the lands he intended to describe and sue for therein. Such being the case, in an ordinary proceeding, we would be inclined to hold that the description of the lands as given in appellant’s cross-action was a clerical error, but as we understand the law, in order for a pleading to remove cloud from title to be sufficient as such, it must not only show specifically what constitutes the cloud, but it must also contain such allegations as show that the pleader owns or has rights in the property, title to which is beclouded, as requires that a court of equity quiet the pleader’s title by removing said cloud. Under appellant’s pleadings, as they appear in the transcript, we think because of the description of the only property he tends to show himself entitled to' or to have any right in, in said pleadings, is not that which he alleges to be beclouded by appellees’ claim, especially in view of the liberal construction given the act of 1905 by the Supreme Court of this state as a bar by limitations of actions such as appellant seeks to set up in his cross-action, we have reached the conclusion that we are not warranted in holding that the description of the lands claimed by appellant in his cross-action has been as a result of a clerical error misdescribed, and in construing said pleadings as if the lands sued for by appellees had been described therein.
For the reasons above stated, we now hold that appellant’s pleading first filed on January 2, 1902, herein was and is insufficient as a cross-action either in trespass to try title or as an action to remove cloud from title, and that the act of 1905 became and was at the time of the trial below a complete bar against appellant’s attacking ap-pellees’ title, and for these reasons we hold that the trial court did not err in excluding as evidence the testimony which tended to show appellees’ title invalid.
The motion for rehearing is therefore *986granted. The judgment of reversal heretofore rendered by this court is set aside and judgment is here now rendered by this court affirming the judgment of the trial court, and it is so ordered.