Court Opinion

ID: 9833001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:21:53.218494+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:39.776827
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellee Mrs. Jehn has presented a motion for rehearing which vigorously attacks our holdings “that there is no evidence in the record to show that any property of the estate is in danger of being lost, removed, or *211materially injured by the appellant,” and no evidence “from which it could be reasonably inferred that appellee was in danger of suffering great financial loss, or that the estate would be wasted by the executor.” No evidence is presented or referred to in the motion sufficient, to sustain any of the several specific acts or omissions of the appellant set out in appellee’s application for the appointment of a receiver upon which she based her general allegations that she is in “great danger of suffering great financial loss” and has grounds to fear that the “books and records will be mutilated or destroyed and will be unavailable upon the trial of this 'cause,” and there is no such evidence in the record.
But appellee contends that the court was authorized to appoint a receiver because the evidence shows that the amount expended by the executor from December, 1923, to March, 1927, exceeds the revenues of the estate during that period, and also because the account presented by the executor shows that he has appropriated, as fees and commissions for services rendered the estate, sums in excess of the amount legally due him.
We cannot sustain either of these contentions. Waiving any question of the sufficiency of appellee’s pleadings to entitle her to have a receiver appointed on these grounds, they are, when the whole record is considered, insufficient to sustain the conclusion that the estate is in danger of being wasted or that appellee is in danger of suffering great financial loss unless a receiver is appointed.
All of the books and records of the estate were before the court. While the testimony of the bookkeeper, Simon Kottwitz, is confusing and hard to understand, he does testify that the expenditures during the period mentioned exceeded the revenues, b.ut the undisputed evidence and books and records show that out of the revenues of the estate the appellant has paid the debts of the estate, some of which were liens upon the real 'estate, and that the net value of the estate, without considering the increase in the value of the property, is $1,924.47 in excess of the value of the estate received by him.
 The record shows that appellant has charged the estate or estates $500 attorney’s fees for probating the will of each of his testators, and has also charged commissions on sales made by the drug store.
There is evidence sufficient to sustain the finding that the charges for probating the wills were unreasonable, and it seems to be settled that an administrator or executor who conducts a mercantile business for an estate is not entitled to commissions on sales made in conducting the business. Dwyer v. Kalteyer, 68 Tex. 554, 5 S. W. 75.
But these questions are all involved in the suit brought by the executor, and the fact that he is claiming the right to retain such amounts as compensation is not sufficient ground for the appointment of a receiver, in the absence of allegations and proof that he is insolvent.
The cases of Temple State Bank v. Mansfield (Tex. Civ. App.) 215 S. W. 154, and Shaw v. Shaw, 51 Tex. Civ. App. 55, 112 S. W. 124, cited and relied on by appellee, do not sustain the contention that the facts of this case justify the appointment of a receiver. In each of those cases a receiver was appointed without notice to the defendant upon a sworn petition setting up facts which, if true, entitled the plaintiff to have a receiver, and showed such emergency as authorized the appointment without notice to the defendant. In this ease, upon a hearing, the evidence wholly fails to establish the allegations made in the petition for appointment of a receiver.
We adhere to the conclusions expressed in our original opinion, and the motion for rehearing has been overruled.
Overruled.