McDaniel v. Cage Crow
McDaniel v. Cage Crow
Opinion of the Court
This suit was brought by ap-pellees, a banking partnership, against appellant on the following guaranty:
“Cage & Crow, Bankers, Stephenville, Texas —Gentlemen: You are the owners of a certain note for $107.50, dated December 27, 1913, due October 1, 1914, signed by H. L. McDaniel and payable to the order of-⅛ together with interest from date, and for and in consideration of the extension of said note by you as agreed upon, which is to be paid by my son out of his wages for cotton seed hauling, and in such consideration I hereby guarantee you the payment of said note in full on January 1, 1915, or any balance that might be due on same at that time. Witness my hand at .Stephenville, Texas, this the 4th day of October, 1914. W. O. McDaniel. Witness: W. S. Watson.”
The evidence discloses that H. L. McDaniel, maker of the original note, was the brother of appellant, and that prior to the maturity of said original note and before the execution of the above guaranty, said H. L. McDaniel died. The original note was given to one B-. L. Hale for the purchase price, in part, of two horses and a wagon, and a mortgage to secure the note was given on said property and one bale of cotton. Subsequent to H. L. McDaniel’s death, his widow, appellant, and appellant’s son Gus, a minor-, agreed among themselves that the widow should sell and turn over to the son of appellant the horses covered by the mortgage, and that W. O. McDaniel and his son should assume the payment of the note to the bank, appellees here. The son should use the horses in hauling, and thereby earn money with -which to pay the note. After the execution of the guaranty by appellant, the administrator of the estate of H. L. McDaniel took possession, of the team, and they were sold. Appellees sued out a writ of attachment in the justice court, where this suit originated, •and under the writ the officer levied an attachment on five certain mules of the stated value of $425 as the property of appellant. One Chas. McLaren, the son-in-law of appellant, filed his claimant’s affidavit and bond, with W. H. Frey and John W. Frey as sureties, and recovered possession of three of the mules theretofore levied upon, and appellant replevied the other two.
The trial court instructed a verdict for plaintiff, and from a judgment in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $156.25, decreeing a foreclosure of the attachment lien as to three of the mules, the court finding that the other two were exempt property, the defendant has appealed.
“tie [meaning Gus, the son of appellant] kept the horses and handled and hauled with them until they took them. I stated here to the jury that I thought it would be all right for him to have the horses. I didn’t have any use for them, but I thought it would relieve the woman [meaning the widow of H. L. McDaniel]. Yes, sir; it would have been a benefit to me to have relieved the woman. I told you that I signed the agreement at the time I did sign it in order to get an extension of the time on the note.”
“Under the liberal rules as to amendment, even of writs of attachment, which have prevailed in this state, we are of opinion, however, that the court did not err, under the facts of this case, in permitting the writ to be amended as it was; and it may be that the levy should be given effect only from the time the writ was amended. When the officer levied the writ in this case there was no interference with the possession of the property, which was in his hands as sheriff by reason of levies of other writs, and no injury could result to appellants from the amendment. The writ was valid at least from the time it was amended.”
See, also, Bridges et al. v. Bank, 47 Tex. Civ. App. 454, 105 S. W. 1018. In 6 C. J. p. 189, it is said:
“A variance as to the amount of the claim affords no ground for setting aside the attachment where the amount stated in the writ is less than that demanded in the complaint or summons, for in such case defendant cannot be prejudiced, and where the writ and complaint corresponded, although the amount named in the affidavit was smaller, it was held that a motion to quash the writ was properly denied where plaintiff amended his bond to correspond to the larger amount. But a writ for an amount in excess of plaintiff’s claim is improper and voidable as to the excess.”
But in the instant case the amount recited in the writ is not only in excess of the amount recited in the affidavit, but is an amount in excess of the jurisdiction of the justice court. Statutes allowing amendments to writs of attachment relate only to such defects as would not render the process absolutely void. Where the writ is void, it is a nullity, and to amend in such a case would be to create a new writ, giving it a retroactive effect. Clawson v. Sutton Gold Mining Co., 3 S. C. 419; Whitney v. Brunette, 15 Wis. Cl. While our statutes do not specifically provide for the amendment of writs of attachment, yet the rule of decisions permits such amendments when the defect is one of mere clerical omission or oversight, as shown in the cases heretofore cited. The amount recited in the writ was a jurisdictional allegation, and since this amount was in excess of the justice court jurisdiction, we are of the opinion that the writ was void, not only as to the excess, but in toto. In Greer v. Richardson Drug Co., 1 Tex. Civ. App. 634, 20 S. W. 1127, it was held that where the affidavit for attachment and writ both stated the correct amount of plaintiff’s claim, the petition, which by mistake demanded a less amount, might be amended after the issue of the writ to support the attachment. In this connection Judge Head, speaking for the court, said:
“It will be noted that the amendment was of the petition, and not of the affidavit or writ of attachment.”
In that case, as in this, the error as to the amount was one which, in the absence of an amendment, would have affected the jurisdiction of the court. By the language used, it is evident that the court.did not wish to be understood as holding that a writ stating an amount beyond the jurisdiction of the court could be amended. While article 1824, V. S. Texas Civil Statutes, provides for the amendment of pleadings, yet, as before stated, there is no special statutory authority for the amendment of a writ. This distinction is recognized in Tarkinton v. Broussard, 51 Tex. 550. For an illuminating discussion of the subject of amendments as applied to attachments, see Sydnor v. Chambers, Dallam, Dig. 601. In the case cited in Drake on Attachments, § 284, it was held that where, by a slip of the pen in making out the writ, the command to the officer was to attach property to the value of $6 only, and with the consent of the defendant the writ was amended to read $600, that a subsequent at-tacher was not affected by the amendment.
For the reasons given, we are constrained to hold that the trial court erred in failing to sustain appellant’s motion to quash the writ. The judgment will be reformed so as to exclude therefrom the decree of foreclosure of the attachment lien. The judgment against appellant for the debt is affirmed. It follows that the judgment against the sureties on the replevy bond, to wit, W. H. and John W. Frey, must be set aside, inasmuch as their liability was dependent upon the sustaining of the trial court’s conclusion and judgment with reference to the amendment of the attachment writ, and its subsequent sufficiency and validity.
Reformed and affirmed.
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