Court Opinion

ID: 9664757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:28:39.158952+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:09.736537
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
In our original opinion we modified and reformed the trial court’s judgment so as to delete that portion awarding interest to appellee between the dates of January 17, 1951, and October 17, 1956. We were of the opinion that appellee’s general prayer for interest * * * “from the 5th day of January, 1951” * * * was not specific enough to sustain recovery between such dates. We also remarked that it is doubtful that appellee’s cause of action constituted a claim for damages to which interest could be added as an element thereof during such interim. Should we have erred in our construction of appellee’s prayer for interest, we think it proper to elucidate in regard to our latter statement concerning the propriety, in any event, of allowing appellee interest between the dates referred to:
Appellee’s claim for relief is purely of an equitable nature. To receive equity he must concede to equity. Penalizing the appellants under these circumstances is beyond equity’s pale. Appellee himself was unaware of the true excess in acreage of the tract of land at the time of his deed of January, 1951. He had no suspicion of an appreciable excess until the tract was sold by appellants in April, 1953, to the Federal Land Corporation. About or upon this latter date he testified that he was informed by one of the appellants of an acreage materially in excess of that which he had believed the tract contained. Possessed of this knowledge he yet delayed fifteen months longer before making demand of the appellants in February of 1956 in the form of the lawsuit brought against them for the value of the excess acreage, together with interest thereon. Under the testimony of all the party litigants, none knew the amount of acreage that exceeded the descriptive call in the deed until such was established by the testimony of a surveyor during the trial. The appellee’s demands were clearly of an unliquidated nature and an approximate guess on his part and any payment that could have been tendered would have been a guess on appellants’ part. To allow recovery of such interest would only be to penalize the appellants for failing to have the tract surveyed immediately after having received it. See: St. Louis, Southwestern Ry. Company of Texas v. Seale & Jones, Tex.Com.App., 267 S.W. 676.
Appellee’s motion for rehearing is overruled.