Pye v. Wyatt
Pye v. Wyatt
Opinion of the Court
This is an appeal from an order of the district judge granting a temporary injunction. There are no briefs nor assignments of error in the record, which contains only the petition and answer, the order of the judge, and the appeal bond. The petition presents, in substance, the following material facts as grounds for the injunction: S. Beck, who is made defendant in the injunction proceeding, instituted suit in the justice’s court (in which precinct or county is not stated) on April 16th (year not stated). The defendant B. F. Pye was the attorney of Beck. It appears that the plaintiff’s cause of action in said suit was an assignment of wages by an employé of Wyatt to Beck. This cause came on for trial on June 12th (year not stated). Quoting from the petition: “And after the justice of the peace, J. B. Synnott, had heard the evidence and argument of counsel on the following day, the 13th day of June, he informed the defendant B. F. Pye that he would be compelled to render judgment for the defendant; that as soon as the defendant Pye found what the judgment of the court would be, later in the day, he, without warrant of law, justice, or right, had the said justice of the peace to enter a nonsuit in said case, and then afterwards in order to harass this plaintiff and to obtain an advantage over him, filed the suit in Galveston county, in the city of Galveston, in the justice court of precinct No. 1, which had no jurisdiction either of the subject-matter or of the parties, and no jurisdiction was alleged or proven, and obtained the void judgment out of which this execution had been issued. Plaintiff shows: That this subject-matter was fully litigated and tried in J. B. Synnott’s court, and by all the canons of right and justice and law a judgment should have been rendered and in fact was given in favor of plaintiff, but, as aforesaid, it was not entered up, and instead a judgment of nonsuit was entered after the defendant Pye discovered that he could not recover. That the suit in Galveston county was brought without any color of right, and! that the court had no jurisdiction over either the subject-matter or the parties, and plaintiff, believing that the said matter had been settled in J. B. Synnott’s court, and further knowing that said Galveston justice court had no jurisdiction over him or the subject-matter, was ignorant of the fact that any judgment was rendered against him, and! that any execution had been issued, and believed that the vexatious matter had been dropped. That the conduct of defendant B. F. Pye is most reprehensible and outrageous in filing said suit in Galveston county, and, when the smallness of the sum is considered, the judgment being only for $11.20, this plaintiff believes that said suit was done for the purpose of annoying and harassing him, and has injected loss and damages on him by reason of his acts.” An execution was issued on this judgment rendered by the justice court of Galveston county and placed in the hands of A. W. Land, constable of precinct No. 1 (county not stated), who, at the instigation of the said Beck and Pye, was about to levy the same upon the property of appellee, and injunction is prayed for to restrain him from doing so, and also to restrain Beck and his attorney, Pye, from recovering. Upon presentation of the petition to the district judge a temporary writ was ordered to issue. The defendants appeal from this order.
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It is stated that the judgment was rendered, and it cannot be impeached in this way. We might conclude by inference from the amount of the judgment — $11—and the fact that it is the same subject-matter that was litigated in Justice Synnott’s court, that the matter in controversy was within the jurisdiction of the justice’s court, and, in the absence of any allegation in the remotest degree tending to show that appellee had no proper legal notice of the suit, it might be presumed from the mere rendition of the judgment that the court had acquired jurisdiction of his person. It is alleged that ap-pellee is now — that is, at the time of. the filing of the suit — a resident of Jefferson county; but there is no allegation that he was not a resident of precinct No. 1, Galveston county, at the time that suit was instituted.
The order granting the writ is vacated, and the temporary writ is dissolved. Cariker v. Dill, 140 S. W. 845; Railway Co. v. Lunn, 141 S. W. 538; Beaty v. Goggan, 131 S. W. 631; Hudson v. Smith, 133 S. W. 487.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- PYE Et Al. v. WYATT
- Cited By
- 20 cases
- Status
- Published