Court Opinion

ID: 9830429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:12:29.888885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:22.320068
License: Public Domain

On Motion of Appellant for a Rehearing.
 We do not think the motion- should be granted for any of the reasons set forth in it. (1) The burden of proving his case was on appellant, and it was not error for the trial court to so instruct the jury. Doubtless the burden of proving the note was altered as charged would have been on appellees had it not conclusively appeared the note was so altered. Moore v. Orgain (Tex. Civ. App.) 291 S. W. 583. But it so appearing, the burden clearly was on appellant to prove that the makers he sought judgment against consented to the alteration. Dewees v. Bluntzer, 70 Tex. 406, 7 S. W. 820; Kalteyer v. Mitchell, 102 Tex. 390, 117 S. W. 792; note to Burgess v. Blake, 128 Ala. 105, 28 So. 963, 86 Am. St. Rep. 78, note 128. (2) The findings of the jury numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4 were not conflicting. The one numbered 1 was not that all the parties who signed the note consented to the alteration, but (considered in connection with the finding numbered 2) was that only one of them, to wit, Wade Sanders, so consented. And so as to the findings numbered 3 and 4. Construed together, they were that Wade Sanders alone ratified appellant’s act in altering the note. (3) The fact that the answer of ap-pellees setting up the alteration in the note was sworn to by only one of them (to wit, Wade Sanders) was of no importance. It *981was not necessary that it should have been sworn to by any of them. Ruiz v. Campbell, 6 Tex. Civ. App. 714, 26 S. W. 295. (4) The burden of proof being (as we have seen) on appellant to prove that appellees consented to the alteration, this court, after reading and considering the evidence, does not think it ought to say that the conclusion of the Jury that appellant had not discharged the burden as to appellee Barton was unwarranted.
The motion is overruled.