Court Opinion

ID: 9680119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:20:50.797761+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:24.680747
License: Public Domain

On Motions for Rehearing

Both appellants and appellees have filed motions for rehearing. Both motions are overruled. We limit our comments to matters not discussed in our original opinion.
On submission of the cause, we permitted appellants to file a supplemental brief including additional points of error, and we discussed several of the supplemental points in our original opinion. One of the supplemental points not discussed asserts that the record contains no evidence to support the jury’s finding in answer to issue number nine that if each of the installment checks, which plaintiffs assert that they mailed every month, had ’been presented to the bank in due course of business, they would have been paid. Another supplemental-point asserts that this finding is against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. Appellants reargue these points in their motion for rehearing. They insist that plaintiffs’ bank statements reveal six occasions on which the balance would not have been sufficient to cover the checks if they had been presented promptly, and they point out that plaintiffs offered no testimony by a bank officer that the checks would have been paid, or any evidence that other checks had been paid regardless of insufficiency of funds.
We overrule these points because we do not consider the issue controlling in the light of this record. Since the undisputed evidence shows that the checks were never presented, the jury’s finding that they were mailed necessarily implies that the payee accepted and held them without presenting them to the bank. Therefore, the status of the bank account is immaterial. The payee cannot retain checks tendered in payment of installments due over a period of almost two years, never present any of them for payment, and then successfully maintain that the debtor is in default on the theory that some of the checks, if presented, would not have been paid.
Appellants also renew their argument that the jury’s finding in answer to issue number eight that the checks were mailed each month on or before the due date of each installment is contrary to the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. They cite various circumstances casting doubt on the credibility of Mrs. Latham’s testimony that the checks were mailed. Although these circumstances may be persuasive on the issue of her credibility, we cannot say that the jury was without justification in accepting her direct and positive testimony that she mailed the checks each and every month.
Motions overruled.

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On Motion to Retax Costs

Appellants have moved to retax the costs in this court to the extent that appellees caused to be included in the transcript various matters not pertinent to the appeal. This motion is sustained. The transcript shows that after appellants had made their request to the clerk of the trial court in accordance with Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 376, specifying the documents to be included in the transcript, ap-pellees made an additional request “to include complete copies of all pleadings, including Petitions, Answers and Motions and all Orders entered in this cause.” As a result of these requests, we have before us a transcript in three volumes, consisting of four hundred sixty-nine pages. Among the documents included are abandoned pleadings and exceptions to abandoned pleadings, motions and orders with respect to depositions, a motion for continuance, a motion in limine, a motion for summary judgment and the answer to it, and numerous other matters having no relation to the questions presented to us. This material has been of no benefit to us, but, on the contrary, has added to our labors.
Appellees’ attempt to justify inclusion of the additional material on the ground that they did not know what contentions they would have to meet. The attempted justification fails. If appellees’ counsel finds, on examining appellants’ • brief, that material documents have been omitted from the transcript, the remedy is to suggest the filing of a supplemental transcript under Tex.R.Civ.P. 428. We call attention also to Tex.R.Civ.P. 370, which refers to “[l]iberal provisions ... in these rules for amendments on appeal to bring forward any material matter which may have been omitted.” This rule adds: “With this protection the bar is expected to cooperate in shortening the records in furtherance of the provisions of these rules.”
We find appellees’ request for inclusion of all documents in the record not specified by appellants as contrary to both the letter and spirit of the rules, and we retax the costs accordingly. Appellants compute the cost of the additional material in this record as one hundred eighty dollars, and this figure is not challenged by appellees. Consequently, this amount of the cost of the transcript is taxed against appellees. The other costs of the appeal are taxed as provided in our original judgment.
Appellants have also asked us to clarify our judgment with respect to costs in the trial court in view of our reversal and rendition of judgment in their favor on the conspiracy count. Our judgment made no provision concerning costs in the trial court. Since we remanded the case to the trial court with instructions to proceed in accordance with our opinion, that court should make a proper allocation in its final judgment of the costs in the trial court.