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26 Tex. Ct. App. 248

Douglass v. State

Court of Appeals of Texas

Decided October 10, 1888

Court of Appeals of Texas · decided 1888-10-10

Tried below before the Hon. T. M. Paschal. The opinions disclose,the nature of the case. The amount of the bond adjudged was eight hundred dollars

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-10-10

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 1992

5 state decisions

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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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Willson, Judge.

¶1The bail bond obligates the principal to appear “at the next term of the district court of Kerr county, Texas, at the court house in the town of Kerrville, on the eighth Monday after the first Monday in March, it being May 2, 1887.” At the time specified a legal term of said court could not be held, and no term was then held, hut on the ninth day of May, that being the ninth Monday after the first Monday in March, 1887, a legal term of said court was held, at which term said bail bond was declared forfeited.

¶2In answer to the citation issued upon the judgment nisi, defendants attacked the validity of the proceeding because the time stated in the bond for the appearance of the principal was a time when no legal term of said court could be held. This objection was overruled, and judgment final was rendered upon said judgment nisi.

¶3We are of the opinion that the whole proceeding is erroneous, and that the bail bond is a nullity. If the bond had merely stated that the principal should appear “before the district court *250of Kerr county, Texas, at its next regular term, to be held at,” etc., it would have been sufficient; but,- having specified the exact time when he was bound to appear, and that time being one at which a legal term of said court could not be held, renders the bond fatally defective. (Burnett v. The State, 18 Texas Ct. App., 283; Thomas v. The State, 12 Texas Ct. App., 417; Thomas v. The State, 13 Texas Ct. App., 496.)

¶4Because of the fatal defect in the bail bond above mentioned, the judgment is reversed and the proceeding dismissed.

¶5Reversed and dismissed.

¶6This opinion was delivered at the Austin branch of the court on June 20, 1888, but a motion for rehearing being filed by the Assistant Attorney General, the same was taken under advisement and transferred to Tyler, where it was. dlsjMmd of in. the opinion that follows. •

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