Court Opinion

ID: 9832995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:21:44.070216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:57.298621
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellees say, “The court erred in its opinion, in holding that the peremptory instructions in favor of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, T. J. Freeman, and International & Great Northern should not have been givenand, as appellees desire that the *146judgment in their favor should not be disturbed, the motion for rehearing of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway-Company, the International & Great Northern Railroad Company, and T. J. Freeman, receiver, is granted, and the judgment will be affirmed as to them.
In the brief of appellant the numbers of the assignments of error in the record are discarded and new numbers given, and they are “numbered from the first to the last in their consecutive order.” Rule 29 for Courts of Civil Appeals (142 S. W. xii). By that rule in regard to assignments of error “it is not required that they shall be presented in the order in which they appear in the original assignment of errors filed in the office of the clerk of the trial court, and the numbers of such original assignments may be discarded.” The provisions of that rule were strictly followed by appellant in briefing its case; and, if we had ever felt disposed to disregard assignments of error because not numbered consecutively, which we have not, we could not have justified such a course under the provisions of that rule. This is said in deference to a request that we give our views on the subject
The new rule requiring reference to the motion for a new trial in assignments of error had been in effect only a few weeks when this cause was tried, and this court did not feel called upon to enforce it until such time that the rules were published and became generally known. The rules were not published in any authoritative form, that was generally known among attorneys, until about April 16, 1912, when they were published in 142 Southwestern Reporter. That was just a few days before this cause was tried. The Supreme Court cannot set aside statutes by rules, and that court has decided that objections to charges shall not be included in motions for new trials. Railway v. Beasley (Sup.) 156 S. W. 183. The assignments in appellant’s brief, based on charges given, were sufficient to raise the question discussed in our original opinion.
We adhere to the opinion that the court in the general charge presented the cause on the verbal contract alone, and the special charges given were made applicable only in case the jury found there was no verbal contract. It is an admission that the jury found there was an oral contract, when appellees offer to remit that part of the verdict relating to damages sustained by a failure to have the cattle in condition to fill with water prior to sale. The verdict was necessarily based on damages arising from a breach of the oral contract, which kind of contract has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of the United States, as is indicated in our former opinion. The whole of the verdict being based on the oral contract, a remittitur of the part found for the “fill,” which was not given the cattle, would not cure the verdict.
There was no charge made in our former opinion of conscious fraud upon the part of appellees in entering into the oral contract with appellant as to the water “fill” of the cattle. The evidence fails to show any attempt or desire upon the part of appellees to defraud any one, and the court merely declared that it would not enforce a contract which would have a tendency to perpetrate a- fraud. Independent of any intention or desire to defraud any one, the terms of the contract would in law amount to a fraud. If it be a custom to keep cattle from water or food for a certain time, and then have them to “fill” themselves just before a sale, it is a “custom better kept in the breach than in the performance”; and while it might be that, being done with the knowledge of the buyer, he would have no cause of complaint, yet a contract with a railroad company to assist in the watering process could not be enforced.
The motion of appellees is overruled.