Court Opinion

ID: 9833916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:08:32.568804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:09.101995
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The action of this court in reversing the judgment of the court below and here rendering a judgment in favor of appellant is attacked as erroneous on quite a number of grounds set out in the motion. Being of the opinion that the motion should be overruled, unless either the contention made that the county court was without jurisdiction of *1182tlie cause, or that we were without right, in rendering a judgment, to loot to the finding of that court to determine the amount collected by appellee on account of the notes, should be sustained, and having some doubt as to whether either of these contentions should be sustained or not, we certified questions covering them to the Supreme Court. That court having answered in an opinion delivered March 22, 1911, that we had such a right and that the county court had jurisdiction of the cause (135 S. W. 529), we now overrule the motion.
On Correction of Judgment.
[3] The sum appellant sought by its suit to recover as damages for the conversion of the notes was $1,000. The fact that it may have appeared from the testimony heard that appellant’s damages amounted to a sum in excess of the sum sued for would not have authorized the county court to render a judgment in appellant’s favor for a greater sum than that sued for. In reversing the judgment rendered by the county court, this court was without authority to render a judgment in appellant’s favor for a greater sum than the county court could have adjudged in its favor. But we undertook, it seems, to do so. The judgment rendered here was in appellant’s favor for the sum of $898.50 and interest thereon at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum from July 6, 1905 — the date the conversion occurred. Calculation shows that interest at that rate to October 29, 1909, the date of the trial in the county court, would amount to the sum of $232.14. This sum added to the $898.50 would make an aggregate of $1,130.64, or a sum $130.64 in excess of the sum for which the county court could have rendered judgment. By the terms of the judgment rendered here, this excess was adjudged to appellant, when it could not have been adjudged to it by the court below. The judgment rendered here therefore is erroneous. To correct it the order heretofore made overruling appellee’s motion for a rehearing will be set aside, and the motion will be granted. The judgment of this court will then be so reformed as to adjudge a recovery in favor of appellant against appellee of the sum of $1,000 and interest thereon from its date at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum, instead of a recovery of the sum of $808.50 and 6 per cent, interest thereon from July 6, 1905.