Court Opinion

ID: 9868745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:54:33.597657+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:54.640278
License: Public Domain

On Appellees’ Motion for Rehearing.
The motion quotes the following excerpt from Higgins v. Standard Lloyds, Tex.Civ.App., 149 S.W.2d 143, 146 (referred to in our original opinion): “It is the established rule in this state that a defendant cannot, by filing a cross-action, counterclaim, or plea in reconvention, litigate a suit entirely different and foreign to the main action for an amount over which the court has no jurisdiction. Hardeman [& Son] v. Morgan, 48 Tex. 103; Fridh et al. v. Giberson, Tex.Civ.App., 21 S.W.2d 563; Dawson v. Duffie, Tex.Civ.App., 191 S.W. 709.”
Taken in the abstract and removed from its context, the excerpt seemingly supports appellees’ contention. The court did not, however, have before it the issue we have here. The suit there was upon an automobile insurance policy in which a third party was joined as codefendant with the insurer, upon the allegation that he was claiming some interest in the policy. This third party attempted to litigate, by way of asserted cross-action, a claim below the jurisdiction of the court, which he had against the plaintiff. The latter was asserting no claim against the third party, consequently the issue of set-off was not involved. Nor do the cited cases support the broad implications of the quoted excerpt.
In the Hardeman suit the district court had lost jurisdiction over the amount in controversy by reason of the adoption of the Constitution of 1876, vesting such jurisdiction in the justice court, and passage of a statute transferring all such cases to the justice courts before the cross-action which was within the jurisdiction of the district court under the 1876 Constitution had been filed. It was held that the only power the district court then had in the matter was to order the case transferred to the justice court.
The holding in the Fridh case was simply that the amount of plaintiff’s claim could not be added to that of the cross-action so as to defeat jurisdiction over the latter.
The following quotation from Chief Justice Fly’s opinion in Dawson v. Duffie [191 S.W. 710] states the holding therein: “The object of the cross-action was to cancel a mortgage on land, to remove cloud from title to land and for a writ of possession. In other words appellants sought to prosecute an action in trespass to try title in the county court. The county court had no jurisdic*594tion of such a suit and the court properly struck it out.”
In Gimbel v. Gomprecht, 89 Tex. 497, 35 S.W. 470, cited in the motion, it was held that defendant could not litigate in the county court a counterclaim beyond that court’s jurisdiction by crediting thereon the amount of plaintiff’s claim.
Also cited in the motion is McConnell v. Frost, Tex.Civ.App., 45 S.W.2d 777 (Judge Alexander, then of the Waco court, writing). The holding there was that where the suit was by several plaintiffs, each of whom had a separate claim against a common defendant, no one of which claims was within the court’s jurisdiction, the aggregate of all the claims could not be taken to confer jurisdiction, even though each of the claims was secured by mechanic’s lien upon personal property, value of which was not alleged so as to show jurisdiction thereof in the court. It had previously been held in Pettus v. Weyel, Tex.Civ.App., 225 S.W. 191, that jurisdiction of a claim held by one party could not be acquired by joining in the same suit the claim of another party which was within the court’s jurisdiction, even though the two claims grew out of the same transaction. The suit there was by the father for himself in an amount below the court’s jurisdiction, and as next friend for his minor son, in an amount within such jurisdiction, for personal injuries inflicted on the son. To the same effect is the recent case of Long v. Wichita Falls, 176 S.W.2d 936, Chief Justice Alexander writing for the Supreme Court.
On the other hapd, it was held in the early case of Ferguson v. Culton, 1852, 8 Tex'. 283 (Chief Justice Hemphill writing), quoting from the syllabus: “Where a creditor has several notes against the same debtor, though they be all due, and in the same right, being each within the jurisdiction of a Justice of the Peace, but in the aggregate exceeding that jurisdiction, a suit may be brought before a Justice of the Peace upon each of them, or a suit may be brought upon them in the aggregate in the District Court.”
The opinion reads: “There can be no doubt that the suit was properly brought before the magistrate; and there can be as little, that the plaintiff, at his option, might have sued upon them in the aggregate, in the District Court. The point is too plain to require illustration or authority.”
It may not be possible to reconcile the holdings in all of these several cases by applying any general abstract principle. We have cited them as illustrative of the application of apparently irreconcilable principles to different factual situations.
It has been the policy in this state from the earliest times to avoid multiplicity of suits. That was the underlying basis for our joinder statutes (Arts. 750-755 R.S. 1895) which were first enaited in 1840. They applied to actions at law this salutary objective which courts of equity had theretofore applied under more restricted circumstances. See Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Pearlstone, 53 S.W.2d 1001. It is applied in that class of cases which authorize joinder as against a plea of privilege (venue) of claims as to which venue would not otherwise lie in the county where suit is brought, with a claim as to which such venue does lie. Middlebrook v. David Bradley Mfg. Co., 86 Tex. 706, 26 S.W. 935, and numerous subsequent cases following its holding. We see no distinction in principle between entertaining jurisdiction of a claim below the court’s jurisdictional amount when pleaded by way of set-off “as a matter of defense” in order to adjust the respective liabilities of the parties and thereby avoid a multiplicity of suits, and the joinder by plaintiff of a claim below the jurisdiction of the court for a like objective. This was the express holding in Garrett v. Robinson — -a holding essential to the decision reached.
The motion is overruled.
Overruled.