Brooks v. Bonner
Brooks v. Bonner
Opinion of the Court
This suit was brought by appellant against the appellees, Wm. F. Bonner, Emma J. Bonner, Mary A. Bonner, and the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company. The petition alleges that the residence of the appellees Bonner is unknown, and that the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company is a corporation having its domicile and principal office in the county of Harris.
The suit is brought to recover a balance of $3,705.16, alleged to be due upon a contract executed by the defendants Bonner and the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company for the construction by said company of a building upon a lot in the city of San Antonio owned by the defendants Bonner, which balance, it is alleged, was transferred and assigned by said company to appellant and its payment guaranteed by the company.
On January 11, 1911, the appellees Wm. F. Bonner, Emma J. Bonner, and Mary J. Bonner, filed their plea of privilege to be sued in Bexar county, Tex., alleging, among other things,, that: (1) The Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was not a necessary party to the suit, and that the allegation that it had its principal office in Harris county, Tex., was for the fraudulent purpose of transferring jurisdiction to the district *565 court of Harris county, Tex., alleging that its principal office was in San Antonio, Tex., Bexar county, and not Harris county, Tex. (2) The prosecution of the suit hy appellant against the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was not done by appellant in good faith, because of the insolvency of the said Brooks-Gordon' Construction Company. (3) The assignment, or transfer, and guaranty hy the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company of said claim to appellant was a mere sham, was not bona fide, not done in good faith, because the Bonners did not owe the Construction Company the sum claimed, which appellant knew, and because said assignment was but a pretense and a fiction; because said contract entered into by the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company with the Bonners was guaranteed by the appellant himself being upon said company’s bond as surety for the faithful performance of said contract.
On March 23, 1911, the appellee the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company, without having been cited, voluntarily filed a general demurrer and a general denial, thereby entering its appearance. On May 11, 1911, the plea of privilege was heard and sustained by the court, and plaintiff’s suit was ordered transferred to the district court of Bexar county. From this judgment, the plaintiff prosecutes this appeal.
We deduce from the record the following facts: On September 14, 1909, the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was a co-partnership composed of C. W. Brooks and P. M. Gordon. This copartnership owed the appellant, B. E. Brooks, approximately $15,-000, and had contracts and assets which approximated that amount. Among the assets was the contract to build the residence for the appellees, the Bonners, on a certain lot of land owned by them in San Antonio, Bexar county, Tex.; it being the contract declared upon by appellant in his pleadings. Afterwards, on October 25, 1909, the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was incorporated. The debt of R. E. Brooks was canceled, and the assets of said copartnership, aggregating $15,000, were put into the corporation as a payment upon its capital stock. The corporation wasi incorporated for $20,000, and, in lieu of the indebtedness due B. E. Brooks, he took 150 shares of stock of said corporation, assigning one share to an attorney by the name of Robert A. John, of Houston, Harris county, Tex., for drawing the charter of said corporation; the balance of the stock, in shares aggregating $5,000, being subscribed for by P. M. Gordon, but never paid for. The corporation, the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company, prosecuted and completed the contract, or at least claimed the completion of the same, and claimed a balance due by the ap-pellees, the Bonners, in the sum of $3,706.16, and through its president, R. E. Brooks, on September 10, 1910, demanded payment of the same. The said corporation, the said Brooks-Gordon Construction Company, had as its sole stockholders B. E. Brooks, owning 149 shares, Robert A. John, owning one share, and P. M. Gordon, owning, but not having paid for, 50 shares, each of the par value of $100. The corporation was properly chartered and organized, a board of directors elected on May 27, 1910, consisting of P. M. Gordon, Robert A. John, and R. E. Brooks. The board of directors met and elected R. E. Brooks its president, P. M. Gordon its vice president and general manager, and Robert A. John its secretary and treasurer. The stockholders and directors adopted a set of by-laws at its meeting on October 30, 1910, among which by-laws the following is cited, which is pertinent and material: “Section 6. The general manager of this corporation shall have the active management of its affairs, subject to the control of its board of directors, and such general manager shall be authorized in the name of the corporation to enter into all such contracts and obligations for the erection and repair of any building or structure, or for the purchase of any. material to be used therein, and to employ or discharge all such labor as may be necessary to carry on the business of said corporation, and to execute all bonds and other contracts or obligations that may be deemed advisable or necessary in the conduct of said business, and to sign the name of said corporation to the same.”
It is undisputed that this transaction was had before any dispute arose between the Construction Company and the Bonners as to whether they had complied with their contract in erecting the building as agreed upon. Afterwards, on the 16th day of September, 1910, the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company, acting through its general manager, P. M. Gordon, assigned the balance claimed by the said Construction Company to be due to the said Construction Company by the said Bonners to R. E. Brooks by written assignment, in which the said Construction Company guaranteed the payment of the same. It was undisputed that the appellant, R. E. Brooks, at the time of the assignment, was a large creditor of the said Brooks-Gordon Construction Company, and. among other things, was an indorser on paper due by that company in the sum of $5,-000, executed by said company, of date July 10, 1910, and payable to the order of the National Bank of Commerce at San Antonio, Tex., on the 10th day of October, 1910, which said note the said R. E. Brooks paid, the said bank in full when the same matured.
At the time the contract for the erection of the building was executed, and for a number of years prior thereto, the defendants Bonner resided in Bexar county, and that *566 was their residence at the time this suit was filed; but all of them were at that time temporarily absent from their home. William E. Bonner was attending a medical school at Philadelphia, Pa., and Emma J. Bonner and Mary Bonner were traveling in Europe. Appellant knew that the residence of said defendants was in San Antonio, and was informed of their temporary address in September, 1910. At the time he filed this suit, in December, 1910, he did not know the then address of the traveling defendants. If he did not know that the defendants’ absence from the state was only temporary, he could have ascertained that fact by the exercise of reasonable diligence. The domicile of the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company is in Harris county, and was in said county when this suit was filed.
The trial judge, in the judgment rendered by him, recites the conclusions of fact upon which his judgment is based, and among such conclusions is the following: “However honestly the plaintiff may have believed that he obtained the right to sue in this county by the proceedings recited in his petition, I cannot escape the conclusion that the assignment was not made in good faith, in the legal meaning of that term, but that it was to all intents and purposes fictitious.”
The Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was insolvent when it transferred the contract to appellant. Appellant testified that the company owed him $15,000 in addition to their liability on their guaranty of the claim involved in this suit, and “that the company will never be able to pay him any of said indebtedness.”
We think it would be an unreasonable extension of the doctrine of Turner v. Brooks, 2 Tex. Civ. App. 451, 21 S. W. 404, and the line of cases following that case, to hold that the evidence in this ease requires a finding that the transfer of the claim by the company to appellant, Brooks, was bona fide. We think the evidence is sufficient to sustain the finding that said transfer was ficti-cious, and the assignment complaining of such finding cannot be sustained.
As we have before found, the domicile of the Brooks-Gordon Construction Company was in Harris county; and, if the trial court found, otherwise, such finding was erroneous, and appellant’s third assignment, complaining of the judgment on this ground, would be well taken, if the transfer by the company to appellant had been real; but our •conclusion that such transfer was fictitious renders any erroneous finding of the court as to the domicile of the company immaterial.
This disposes of all of the questions presented by appellant’s brief. We think none of the assignments show any error which requires a reversal of the judgment; and it is therefore, affirmed.
Affirmed.
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