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59 Tex. 205

Alexander v. Holt

Texas Supreme Court

Decided March 30, 1883

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1883-03-30

Tried below before the Hon. W. D. Wood. Suit by appellee filed in the district court of Walker county, August 24, 1877, to enjoin the sale of cotton and corn and fodder levied on by a special constable by virtue of an execution issued out of a justice court in that county on a judgment rendered January 6, 1877, in favor of appellant and against appellee, for $35.27, besides interest. A-writ of injunction was granted by the district judge.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1883-03-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions — most recently February 1987

3 federal appellate · 1 district · 11 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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Willie, Chief Justice.—

¶1The principal question in this case was decided a few days since in The County of Anderson v. Kennedy, and upon'the authority of that decision we must necessarily sustain the action of the district judge in granting the temporary injunction, and in perpetuating it upon final hearing.

¶2The grounds upon which the injunction was asked were the exemption of the property seized from execution, and the want of authority in Cole (who assumed to be acting as special constable) to make the levy.

¶3It is unnecessary to consider the last ground, as, in our opinion, the property levied upon was not subject to execution for the debts of the 'appellee. So far as the corn and fodder were concerned, they were exempt under the law in force at the time, as provisions and *206forage on hand for home consumption, it having been alleged and proved that they were not more than sufficient to reasonably support appellee’s family and supply his stock for one year. Pasch. Dig., art. 6834.

¶4We are of opinion, also, that the crops of corn and cotton growing on the homestead were also exempt, as necessary to its beneficial enjoyment.

¶5Chief Justice Hemphill, in Cobbs v. Coleman, 14 Tex., 598, said that it was “ very clear that by these reservations the legislature intended a real substantial benefit. . . That by fair construction the grants in the statute must include not only the subject itself, but everything absolutely essential to its beneficial enjoyment.” The same doctrine is also deducible from Anderson v. McKay, 30 Tex., 186.

¶6The beneficial enjoyment of a rural homestead supposes that the owner may use it for purposes of cultivation and raising upon it the fruits of the earth. • Of this right he would be deprived if creditors are allowed to invade it, and seize his growing crops and subject them to their debts.

¶7The injunction was rightly perpetuated, and the judgment below is affirmed. •

¶8Affirmed.

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