Court Opinion

ID: 9832412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:53:38.677029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:46.579177
License: Public Domain

On, Motion for Rehearing.
The appellant insists in this motion that this court erred in affirming the judgment herein, because the evidence was insufficient to show an accord and satisfaction, when no such defense was raised in any manner in the lower court. This assertion is contradicted by the record. The defendants pleaded accord and satisfaction by allegations sufficient as against the general demurrer.
*470It is true that the appellant’s brief avoided a discussion of that issue, but by counter propositions the appellees insisted that the evidence sustained that defense, and it was upon consideration of appellees’ contention, and the further fact that we concluded that a proper judgment had been entered in the court below, that we affirmed the judgment. It may be, as contended in the motion, that the court should have submitted the special issues requested by appellant, inquiring specifically whether there had been an accord and satisfaction.
In the motion for new trial, the appellant assigns error "upon the failure of the court to submit such issues, but in the original brief appellant abandoned the assignment of error predicated upon the court’s refusal, thereby waiving the error, if any, on the part of the court in refusing such issues. The point is strongly urged in the motion for rehearing, but it is too late to entitle it to consideration.
 A brief cannot be amended by urging errors in a motion for rehearing, which were not insisted upon in the original brief. The only proposition in the original brief which has not been, in effect, disposed of by the original opinion, was the proposition which challenged the verdict of the jury as having been based upon evidence which the jury obtained after it had retired to consider the case. The bill of exception upon this point shows that, after the jury had retired and deliberated a while, they returned into court and requested that a piece of. paper upon which the cashier of appellant bank had calculated the amounts due and payments made on the note in question, and which had not been offered in evidence, should be given them.
The court’s qualification to the bill shows that he made known the request of the jury to the attorneys of both plaintiff and defendant, and that by agreement of such attorneys, the slip of paper was delivered to the jury. In the court’s qualification it is further stated that one of the attorneys for appellant went to his office and got the paper, and handed it to the court for the purpose of having it submitted to the jury. While it was not proper for the jury to have this paper, which had not been introduced in evidence, under the circumstances stated by the court in his qualification of the bill of exception, the appellant has waived the error. Fields v. Haley (Tex. Civ. App.) 52 S. W. 115; National Bank of Dangerfield v. Ragland (Tex. Civ. App.) 51 S. W. 661.
The contention is further without merit, because appellant failed, in support of its motion for a new trial, to introduce any evidence showing that the paper was considered by the jury or that any injury resulted from the matter complained of. Dunman v. South Texas Lumber Co. (Tex. Civ. App.) 252 S. W. 274.
The propositions urged by appellant in the original brief filed herein, except the one last above discussed, simply insist that under all of the evidence there were no matters of fact for the jury to pass upon, and that the court erred in failing to instruct a verdict for appellant, and therefore necessarily erred in submitting the issue inquiring whether any further amount was due on the note after the appellees made the payment of $1,684.21 on the 21st day of September, 1925. The issues submitted by the court presented practically the controlling issue in the case. Whether or not the act of the bank in accepting and cashing the check amounted to an accord and satisfaction was, under the pleadings and evidence, a material issue; but, in failing to brief the assignment based upon the court’s failure to submit the special issues, the error, if any, has been waived, and' cannot be considered now, however earnestly it may be urged in the motion for a rehearing.
Upon the issue submitted by the court, the evidence was conflicting. The cashier of the bank testified that he had given credit upon the note for all of the wheat which the-tenant, Knapp, had sold, applying the proceeds towards the extinguishment of the note. Metcalf testified that the bank never gave him credit for all the proceeds of the wheat, and “there was an amount of $218 which they did not give me credit for"; further, that the cashier told him that he would give credit for the $218 if Metcalf would renew the note. He was not cross-examined with reference to this statement.
It is clear from the verdict that the jury believed Metcalf’s testimony, and it is sufficient to support the jury’s finding that the payments previously made, together with the $1,684.21 finally paid on September 21st, had fully paid and discharged the indebtedness. So, whether the case be considered either upon the defense of accord and satisfaction, or payment in full, as found by the-jury, a proper judgment has been entered, and the motion is overruled.