Court Opinion

ID: 9760105
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:40:30.113032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:08.302976
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
Appellees have filed a motion for rehearing in which they complain not of our judgment affirming the action of the Trial Court, but rather complain that we, in giving our reasons for affirming the judgment of the Trial Court, went further than was necessary to our disposition of the appeal. They assert we should only consider whether the Trial Court abused its discretion in refusing to grant the injunction.
It is true that we should only determine whether he abused his discretion, but we must under the law give our reasons for the determination of such issue. What we actually held, and hold, is that the Trial Court did not abuse his discretion in refusing a temporary injunction for the following reasons:
1. Article 16, Section 14, of the Constitution is not applicable because the ap-pellees still live within the county. The school trustee is a county officer and this constitutional provision only provides he vacates his office if he becomes a non-resident of the county.
2. Under Article 1.05 of the Election Code a school trustee becomes ineligible to continue to serve, upon proper attack, when he becomes a permanent nonresident of the district. We feel our use of the term “vacate” in our original opinion was perhaps too broad. We think the correct term is “ineligible.” There is nothing in the statute providing that an office will automatically become vacant when a person becomes ineligible. However, in this case the order transferring the territory where appellees live was not final because an appeal was pending before the *304State Board of Education, and therefore appellees at the time the Trial Court denied the injunction were not non-residents of the school district.
3. It was admitted that appellees had been duly elected or appointed to office, had qualified and were acting as trustees. They were, therefore, de facto officers and the action to question their eligibility to continue to serve is by quo war-ranto proceedings. Williams v. Castleman, 112 Tex. 193, 247 S.W. 263, 269; Kunschik v. Nichols, 135 Tex. 1, 137 S.W.2d 1000, 1002; Barrett v. Tatum, Tex.Civ.App., 66 S.W.2d 444; Marta v. State, 81 Tex.Cr.R. 135, 193 S.W. 323, 333; and Snow v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 114 S.W.2d 898.
Appellees’ motion for rehearing is overruled.