Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

33 Tex. 476

Presley v. Holmes

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1870

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1870-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. J. B. Williamson. This suit was an action of trespass to try title and for damages to a tract of land in Shelby county known as the Stephen Holmes survey. The petition was filed in December, 1869, by the appellee and one Caroline E. Edgeworth as co-plaintiffs. Presley, the defendant, appeared and answered at the Fall term, 1863. At the Spring term, 1869, the appellee amended and asked leave to prosecute the suit in her own name.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1870-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently May 1945

3 state decisions

1018701880189019001910192019301940decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Walker, J.

¶1This is an action of trespass to try title, brought in the District Court of Shelby county by the appellee, together with Caroline P. Edgeworth. The latter abandoned the suit, and the action proceeded in the name of the appellee, and it is urged by the appellant that this was error for which we should reverse the judgment. The law is too well settled by the elementary authorities, as well as in the adjudicated cases, to require much comment here, that one joint tenant or tenant in common may maintain either trespass or ejectment, in his own name, against a mere trespasser or wrongdoer. (4 Kent’s Com., 366 to 370; Croft v. Rains, 10 Texas, 523; Watrous v. McGrew, 16 Texas, 511; Grassmeyer v. Beeson, 18 Texas, 766 and 767.) Presley, if-the facts as found by the jury be true, was only a wrongdoer. All the title he pretends to have is derived from Bailey, whose ■title was completely set aside by the district court in 1846, wherein the appellee in this- action recovered from him her father’s headright certificate and field notes, with damages; and also settled another fact pretty conclusively, which is again raised in *479■this case, to-wit, the identity of the appellee as the child of Stephen Holmes. But it is insisted that the evidence in this case does not establish that fact. It is true, the evidence of old Mrs. Applegate and of Truit is somewhat inconclusive, hut it is circumstantial, and the jury were left to deduce the facts of identity and heirship, which they did, and we think very correctly.

¶2We cannot see from the evidence that the title of Stephen Holmes ever passed out of him in his lifetime. Bailey’s pretended sale has been successfully impeached and set aside by the district court, in a judgment not' appealed, and rendered twenty-four years ago. Then it„ descended to his children, or child, if any he had living at the time of his death; and the appellee has satisfied the jury that she is the child of Stephen Holmes, and that he was married to her mother, and the same evidence which satisfied the-jury satisfies us that such are the facts.

¶3There is no error on the part of the court which tried the case, and we think none on the part of the jury. We therefore affirm the judgment of the District Court, with costs to the appellee.

¶4Affirmed.

/33/tex/476 · .json · Public domain