Court Opinion

ID: 9653259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:42:14.203938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:57.411909
License: Public Domain

On Motions for Rehearing
In their motions for rehearing appellees have charged the Court with gross error in holding “that the claims of the minors (children of Joseph Thomas, deceased, and appellant) flow from the estate of the decedent rather than from individual causes of action.” After carefully reviewing our opinion we find no language suggesting such a holding. The trial court construed the contract as conveying to Mandell & Wright a one-third interest in all claims, etc. for damages or other amounts due and owing to Mrs. Thomas, or the estate of Joseph Thomas, deceased, because of the death of Joseph Thomas.
In our opinion we noticed that the trial court did not hold that appellees had been assigned an interest in the individual causes of action owned by the minor children, unless their causes of action flowed from the estate.
The literal wording of the contract indicated that Mrs. Thomas was assigning only a portion of her individual claim. There was nothing in the contract to indicate that she was acting as trustee, personal representative, or administratrix, at the time she signed the contract, nor did the evidence conclusively establish that she intended to so act, or that she was acting in any such capacity. We, therefore, held that ap-pellees failed to sustain the burden of negativing the existence of issues of fact as to the nature and extent of their interest in the claim, rather than holding, in this summary judgment proceeding, that appellees had no interest in that portion of the claim *229belonging to the minor children, or to the estate of Joseph Thomas. It may be that these points were not fully developed by the summary judgment evidence. These and other points were pointed out for the guidance of the trial court in future proceedings. We sustained the appellant’s point that the description of the claim conveyed to appel-lees was ambiguous, and, since the ambiguity was not resolved by the evidence, we reversed the case and remanded it to the trial court.
Appellant raised in her original brief and in her motion for rehearing points concerning conflicts of interest citing certain paragraphs of the Texas Canons of Ethics. We did not consider that the points had been briefed in sufficient depth to require a more extended discussion than that appearing in our original opinion. In view of the disposition made of the case, and the paucity of evidence bearing on the issues, we remain of the same opinion.
The other points raised in the respective motions for rehearing have been considered, and are overruled since the Court feels that they were correctly decided and sufficiently discussed in our original opinion.