J. B. Farthing Lumber Co. v. Williams
J. B. Farthing Lumber Co. v. Williams
Opinion of the Court
This suit was brought by tbe appellant against Emily B. Williams, *454 a feme sole, and others who were tenants upon certain lands in Colorado county which they had rented from the said Emily B. Williams for the year 1912. The purpose of the suit was to recover the rents due for said lands by said tenants, and to enjoin the collection by and the payment to said Emily B. Williams of said rents.
Plaintiff alleged that since the 2d day of July, 1912, it had been owner in fee simple of two certain tracts of land in Colorado county, containing 550 acres, and duly described same; that in December, 1911, plaintiff brought suit against the defendant, Emily B. Williams, in the district court of Harris county, Tex., for the sum of $3,253.46, and did in the same month attach the land situated in Colorado county described in the petition, and that some time in the year 1912, plaintiff proceeded to judgment in sáid suit, and obtained a judgment and an order of sale and a foreclosure of attachment lien, and had said land advertised for sale at the courthouse door in Colorado county for the 2d day of July, 1912; that on said date the sheriff was proceeding to sell said land, but plaintiff and defendant Emily B. Williams entered into an agreement, by which the defendant Emily B. Williams agreed to convey said land to plaintiff in satisfaction of.said debt; that plaintiff did on that day abstain from having the sheriff carry out said sale, and the defendant Emily B. Williams did on that date convey by regular general warranty deed said property to this plaintiff in satisfaction of said judgment; that said deed did not reserve to defendant Emily B. Williams the rents or crop grown on said land, and that at the time said crops were immature, and were not in fact severed from said land, and that said rents were not due at that time, and did not become due until several months thereafter. Plaintiff then sets out that the property had been rented for the season of 1912 to various tenants, setting out the amount rented to each tenant and the terms upon which the same were rented and the amount of rent due from each one, and the amount that .had been collected, but it will not be necessary in this appeal to set out these matters in detail.
Plaintiff further alleged that it was entitled to all of these rents by virtue of having taken a conveyance of said land in satisfaction of its judgment and attachment lien. Defendant) Emily B. Williams replied by numerous exceptions and demurrers unnecessary to mention here, and that, prior to July 2, 1912, she had assigned said rents to Green & Boyd; that consequently she had severed the same from the title to the land, and that she reserved them in her conveyance to plaintiff, but that after she had conveyed to plaintiff, she repurchased the rent claims for the year 1912, and said that she asserted title thereto at the time of this suit. She prayed judgment against the tenants for the rent in each instance and for $1,000 damages for unlawful issuance of the injunction against her.
The answer of three of the four tenants named in the petition admits that they owed rents for the year 1912 for portions of the land described in plaintiff’s petition, stating the amount of said rents, a portion of which they had paid to the defendant Emily B. Williams before the institution of this suit. The balance of the rent admitted to be due by each of said tenants was paid into the registry of the court to abide the result of this suit. Each of said tenants asked that, in event judgment was rendered in favor of plaintiff for the portion of rents paid to defendant Emily B. Williams, he have judgment over against said defendant for said amount.
The record shows that the fourth tenant also answered in the suit, but neither the answer nor its substance is set out in the transcript.
In reply to the answer of defendant Emily B. Williams plaintiff, by its second amended petition, alleged, in substance, that on the 28th day of June, 1912, defendant did execute an instrument in writing, purporting to assign to the said Green & Boyd all the rents due or to become due for the year 1912, and had the same recorded in volume Y, page 340, of the Bond and Mortgage Records of Colorado county. A copy of this assignment was attached as “Exhibit A” to the petition, but plaintiff alleged that this assignment was not made in good faith, was only a pretended conveyance in fraud of her creditors, and that it was understood and agreed that said rents were to be assigned back to the said Emily B. Williams, and in truth and in fact the same were reassigned to the defendant Emily B. Williams, except the sum of $300, which was retained to pay certain attorney’s fees that were due to the said Green & Boyd from the said Emily B. Williams. Plaintiff further alleged that the said Emily B. Williams was laying claim to all said rents, and was attempting to collect the same and would collect the same, unless restrained, and plaintiff prayed judgment for injunction restraining said defendant and for judgment against the other defendants for the rents due from said premises.
After hearing the evidence the trial court instructed the jury to return a verdict for defendants, and upon the coming ini of such verdict, judgment was rendered in accordance therewith.
The undisputed evidence sustains the allegations of plaintiff’s petition as to the purchase of the land by plaintiff from the defendant Emily B. Williams on July 2, 1912. The deed from said defendant to plaintiff conveying the land was a deed of general warranty, and was filed for record in Colorado county on July 2, 1912, the date oi its execution.
*455 The contract between each of the defendant tenants and the defendant Emily B. Williams provided that the tenant give as rent one-fourth of the cotton raised on the land planted in cotton by him and pay $4 per acre for the land planted by him in corn. At the time of the sale of the land to plaintiff none of the crops growing thereon had been gathered or had matured. There is no testimony showing any agreement as to the time the rents were to be paid. The cotton was gathered and sold by the defendant tenants after the sale to plaintiff. The evidence shows the amount of the one-fourth of the proceeds of the cotton which was due as rents, and also the amount due by each of said tenants as rent for the corn land.
“There was no mo-ney paid by Green & Boyd to Miss Williams for this conveyance of rents. She owed us a fee of $300, and we understand we were going to get that out of the rents, these rents, which we did. The intention by us by that conveyance was to get our fee. I don’t know what her intention was. Miss Williams was not acting under my advice in making the transfer to us. I was not her attorney in the matter at the time; I don’t know that I was. We were her attorneys in a different transaction, in a suit pending in the Eleventh District court, an injunction case, involving property on Dallas avenue. This fee was on account of that suit. It was nothing connected with this matter at all. She owed us $300. I couldn’t give the language used by Miss Williams with reference to making the conveyance, but she stated she wanted to transfer the rents on this farm in Colorado county to us. We, at the time, didn’t say anything about wanting to get our fee out of it, but when she wanted to transfer it back, we refused to do it except holding out our fee. There was nothing said between us at the time she proposed to make this transfer to us. She did not say anything about our paying her for the transfer. When she came back to have it reconveyed, she asked us to reconvey the rents to her, and we told her we were willing to do so, but we wanted to reserve enough to pay our fee out of the other transaction. She objected to that first; she said we ought to be willing to trust- her for it, and we told her it was a matter of business, and refused to transfer it except as stated in the transfer, wherein we reserved the $300 on the rents due from these people.”
This instrument transferring the rents to Green & Boyd was filed for record in Colorado county on June 29, 1912, and was recorded on July 4, 1912, in the record of bonds and mortgages of said county.
We think this evidence conclusively shows that the assignment and transfer of the rents, while absolute upon its face, was nothing more than a mortgage. In so far as Miss Williams is concerned,, there is no evidence that she intended that the instrument should have any effect. The conclusion is irresistible from the evidence that her purpose in making the assignment was to place the apparent title to the rents in Green & Boyd, in the belief that by so doing said-rents would not pass to the purchaser of the land under the foreclosure sale, and that she never in fact intended to part with her title. Green & Boyd, however, accepted the assignment as security for the indebtedness due them, and their right to retain the $300 of said rents collected under the assignment is not questioned by plaintiff on this appeal, and no claim is made against the defendants for said amount.
It seems to be settled by the decisions of our Supreme Court that rents upon land, whether payable in money or in a portion of the crop raised on the land, which are not due at the time the land is sold, passes to the purchaser of the land, when, as in this case, no reservation of the rents is made in the deed of conveyance. Willis v. Moore, 59 Tex. 628, 46 Am. Rep. 284; Porter v. Sweeney, 61 Tex. 216; Hearne v. Lewis, 78 Tex. 278, 14 S. W. 572.
The conclusions above expressed require that the judgment pf the court below be reversed, and, the amount of rents due by each of the tenant defendants, being shown by the undisputed evidence, judgment will be rendered in favor of appellant against Miss Williams and each of the tenant defendants for the several amounts due by each of said tenant defendants; and it is so ordered.
Reversed and rendered.
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Reference
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