Court Opinion

ID: 9832863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:15:28.993619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:54.257186
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant insists, in its motion for rehearing, that regardless of the fact that the jury found that the cotton here involved was shipped under the general customs and usages of cotton factoring, and that such customs and usages required that the cotton factor, upon demand for margin and the failure of the consignor to furnish such margin, close the contract and sell the consigned cotton, and notwithstanding the fact that O. H. Polley died in January, 1930, appellee, as administratrix of the estate of her deceased husband, O. H. Pol-ley, ratified the acts of appellant in not selling this cotton by her request made in the summer of 1930, to the effect that appellant not sell the cotton at that time, and that by reason of such ratification appellee is now estopped to complain that appellant did not sooner sell said cotton.
We cannot agree with this contention. In the first place, when demand for margin was made by appellant and refused by O. H. Polley, it then and there became the duty of appellant to sell the cotton and *278close the contract, and therefore there was no contract thereafter in existence, which Mrs. Minta (Polley) Hervey, as adminis-tratrix of her deceased husband’s estate, might ratify. In the second place, when O. H. Polley died, in January, 1930, this in itself terminated the factoring contract, and it then and there became the duty of appellant, if it had not already done so, to sell the pledged goods and account to the estate for any surplus or make demand upon the estate for any deficit. 14 Tex. Jur. p. 46, § 299; 25 C.J. p. 347, § 11.
Therefore, in the summer of 1930, appel-lee could not bind the estate of O. H. Pol-ley, or herself, individually, without a full disclosure of all the facts and circumstances surrounding this cotton, and it is unreasonable to suppose that she would have, without any consideration whatever, voluntarily assumed a loss of some $50,000, which had at that time accrued, as the result of the cotton factor’s not disposing of the cotton at the time it became his duty to do so.
We adhere to our former decision in this case, and appellant’s motion for rehearing will be overruled.