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25 Tex. 159

Pyron v. Grinder

Texas Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1860

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1860-10-15

Error from Bexar District Court. The case was tried before Hon. Thomas J. Devine. Grinder sued Pyron, Mitchell, and Temple, charging • that they executed to him thirty-six promissory notes, on the 16th April, 1858, thirty-five of which were for $100 each, and one for $63 50. In an amended petition, the plaintiff made the notes a part of his petition, and filed them. The plaintiff dismissed as to Temple, who was not served.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently October 1923

3 state decisions

101860187018801890190019101920decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Wheeler, G. J.

¶1—It is a sufficient answer to the objection, that the verdict was not warranted by the evidence, *161that this was not made a ground of the motion for a new trial. It is well settled, that this court will not revise the judgment, on the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, unless a new trial was applied for on that ground.

¶2There is nothing in the objection that judgment was not properly rendered against the defendant, Mitchell, as surety. The defendant did not set up the fact of suretyship in his answer, as the statute contemplates, or call on the court to render the judgment therein prescribed. (O. & W. Dig., Art. 1560, 1599.) The court therefore did not err in giving judgment against him as a principal.

¶3The only error assigned which presents any question properly arising upon the record for revision is, that the verdict .is excessive as to the defendant, Mitchell, inasmuch as judgment is rendered against him upon all the notes sued on, and it appears by the petition and exhibits, which are made a part of it, that there was one of them which he did not execute.

¶4In the statement of facts, it is said to have been proved that he executed all the notes. If the allegations of the petition laid any foundation for the introduction of such proof, or stated a cause of action co-extensive with the proof, it would undoubtedly support the recovery; and the question is, whether it does state such cause of action.

¶5The allegation of the original petition is, that Mitchell, together with the other defendants, executed all the notes. But the amended petition makes the notes a part of it; and, as they are there set out, it appears that the signature of this defendant, Mitchell, is wanting to one of them. It has been repeatedly decided, that where an instrument sued on is made a part of the petition, there can be no variance between the allegations and the proof; and this is upon the ground, that the instrument itself, thus made a part of the petition and filed with it for the inspection of the defendant, must control and cure any misdescription of it *162in the body of the petition. Giving it that effect in the present case, the petition shows no cause of action against the defendant, Mitchell, on the note in question. As to that note, therefore, there being no cause of action stated in the petition, the recovery cannot be siqiported; and to that extent the judgment is excessive. This will require that the judgment be reversed and the cause remanded, unless the plaintiff shall see proper to remit so much of the verdict as renders it excessive. In that case, this court will render the judgment which the court below ought to have rendered.

¶6[The plaintiff remitted $100 and interest as against Mitchell, and the judgment was reformed accordingly.]

¶7Affirmed.

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