Court Opinion

ID: 9834044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:15:39.31812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:11.211664
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellee, in its motion for rehearing, strenuously urges that we erred in many respects in our former opinion and judgment. First, that we erred in holding that the trial court should have sustained the appellants’ motion' to postpone the hearing upon the merits of the case until the next term of court. Counsel for appellee states that in such holding we are in direct conflict with the San Antonio Court of Civil Appeals in the case of Lang v. Henke, 22 Tex. Civ. App. 490, 55 S. W. 374, and in Guerra v. Guerra, 213 S. W. 360, and with the Supreme Court in Browder v. Memphis Ind. School District, 107 Tex. 535, 180 S. W. 1077. In Lang v. Henke, supra, writ of error denied, the plaintiff was appellant. In the court below the plaintiff insisted on a jury trial. The cause was set for trial by the court, and, prior to the date for which it was set, the jury had been discharged. The plaintiff insisting on a jury, the court appointed three jury commissioners, and a jury was drawn, and the cause was tried. Appellant made no motion for a continuance, but objected to the ease being tried because the suit was not instituted 10 days before the beginning of the current term. The defendants had waived their right to have the case passed over to the next term, and the plaintiff was held to be in no position to- complain. As said in the case of Browder v. Memphis Ind. School District, supra,
“A court acquires jurisdiction over a plaintiff by his submission to it of the cause of action which he alleges.- A voluntary appearance is as effectual to confer jurisdiction over a defendant as the due service of process.”
But we do not think in the instant case that the filing of an answer by defendant to plaintiffs’ original petition, in which a temporary injunction was prayed for, could be held to be a waiver of the defendant’s right to have the cause passed over until the next term for a hearing on its merits. We do not find any holding in any of the cases cited by appellee, or in any other case examined by us, in our opinion contrary to the holding in the original opinion.
The case of Williams v. Huling, 43 Tex. 113, and Wheeler & Dabney v. Roberts, 2 Willison Civ. Cas. Ct. App. § 127, and other cases cited by appellee to sustain its contention that the effect of the filing of an answer by the defendants was to put the defendants in court, are not cases involving injunctions or other special writs or equitable remedies. At the time that the defendants below filed the motion to pass the hearing on its merits to the next term of court, the only pleading on filé by the plaintiffs was their original petition, in which the prayer for relief was couched in terms sufficient to justify the trial judge to grant a temporary restraining order as well as a permanent injunction. Hence the defendants’ answer was to the original petition, and we think the answer should reasonably be construed as replying to the prayer for a special restraining order.”
The motion for jrehearing is overruled.