Court Opinion

ID: 9832758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:09:51.079569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:51.559546
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The appellee, the McAdams Lumber Company, among other things, especially insists that this court erred in reversing and remanding the cause in favor of the Common School District, for the reason that it did not appeal, neither did it assign error in this court, and for the further reason that it predicated its recovery against the Common *323School District upon two counts in its petition: First, that the contract and the bond executed by Nugent & Bowns, the contractors, and their sureties, inured to the benefit of the Common School District; and, second, that the Common School District was bound upon an order and an acceptance executed by Nugent & Bowns for the amount of the debt in favor of the' McAdams Lumber Company, for material furnished, and specifically urging that a general judgment having been rendered against the Common School District, that its cause of action, particularly upon such order and acceptance, should stand. We said, in the original opinion in this cause: “There being a general judgment against all of the defendants, and as all the rights of the McAdams Lumber Company against the Common School District can only be measured by the contract, the reversal of the judgment as to the sureties carries with it a reversal as to all .the parties.” This language should be applied to, and be taken in connection with, the character of judgment which was rendered against all the defendants, including the Common School District; after rendering judgment in favor of the McAdams Lumber Company against the Common School District, it then provides: “It is further ordered, adjudged, and decreed that the defendant Common School District No. 1 of Cottle county, Tex., do have and recover over and against the said Nugent & Bowns, a copartnership composed of W. P. L. Nu-gent and B. Bowns, and (against) H. N. Garrett, T. A. Fannin, H. M. Ramsey, and W. H. Brunson (sureties), jointly and severally for any and all sums which it may have paid in satisfaction of said judgment aforesaid.”
Clearly, the judgment shows that the court, in rendering judgment in favor of the McAdams Lumber Company against the Common School District, based the same entirely upon the bond and contract executed by Nugent & Bowns, and the sureties, to the Common School District; that the McAdams Lumber Company, upon some theory, was a beneficiary of said bond. The court would not have rendered a judgment in favor of the McAdams (Lumber Company against the Common School District, based upon the order and acceptance, and then rendered a judgment in favor of the Common School District against the sureties upon the bond. The liability of Nugent & Bowns upon the assignment of any part of the fund in the hands of the trustees of the Common School District was upon a different contract and independent of the liability upon the bond. Hence, if the judgment upon the face of it shows that the recovery against the Common School District, in favor of the McAdams Lumber Company, was based upon the bond and not upon the acceptance, then under the authorities there is in reality an implied finding by the court against a recovery in favor of the lumber company upon the acceptance. The expression of one thing is the exclusion of the other.
The Supreme Court of this' state, in the case of Rackley v. Fowlkes, 89 Tex. 613, 36 S. W. 77, the syllabus of which we quote as properly reflecting the opinion as to the particular matter under discussion, said:“Where the pleadings in a (former) suit put in issue plaintiff’s right to recover upon two causes of action, and the judgment awards him a recovery upon one, but is silent as to the other, it is prima facie an adjudication that he was not entitled to recover upon such other cause.” Chief Justice Gaines, in the case of Davies v. Thompson, 92 Tex. 391, 49 S. W. 215, followed Justice Denman, who rendered the decision in the Raekley-Fowlkes Case, in a declaration of the same principle, and which we are inclined to think is applicable to the cause under consideration. The appellee says in his second counter proposition under the fourth assignment of error in his original brief: “This suit was not brought by the defendant school district, but was brought wholly and solely by the plaintiff against the said several bondsmen and the school district jointly and severally, and the plaintiff’s rights are based, first, upon the bond, and, second, upon the O. K.’d order for the amount of the bill,” etc. The trial court, evidently upon this construction, upon some theory of liability upon the bond, permitted a judgment based upon a joint and several liability in favor of the Mc-Adams Lumber Company and against the Common School District and the sureties— first, a judgment upon the bond sued upon in. the first count of plaintiff’s petition, and then, in favor of the school district against the sureties upon the same bond. If that be true, an adjudication of the liability of the Common School District on the bond, upon the authority of the two cases, supra, is prima facie an adjudication that the Mc-Adams Lumber Company was not entitled to recover upon the acceptance; hence, when we reverse the judgment of the McAdams Lumber Company against the sureties upon the bond, a reversal as to one defendant with reference to this bond operates a reversal as to all, because the character of the judgment, logically considered, shows that it could not have been based upon the acceptance. Mc-Rea v. McWilliams, 58 Tex. 334.
The sufficiency of the petition upon general demurrer, against the school district, grounded upon the order and acceptance, and the sufficiency of the evidence in the stricken statement of facts, in view of another trial, to support a judgment upon said acceptance, are not before us, and we are unable to discuss it. It is true that to that extent there is no assignment, the Common School District not appealing or objecting; as to that matter, there is no predicate upon which we could base a discussion. What we say with reference to the rights of the Me-*324Adams Lumber Company is called for by its insistence tbat a reversal of the sureties with reference to this bond could not operate as a reversal of the cause in favor of the Common School District.
We are inclined to think that our former disposition of this cause was correct, and the motion for rehearing is in all things overruled.