Erwin v. Blanks
| Decision Date | 15 January 1884 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 1713. |
| Citation | 60 Tex. 583 |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
| Parties | J. J. & G. W. ERWIN v. J. T. BLANKS. |
APPEAL from Hays. Tried below before the Hon. L. W. Moore.
In June, 1881, in a suit then pending in the county court of Hays county, wherein appellants were plaintiffs and J. M. and H. M. Adams were defendants, a writ of attachment was issued and levied upon certain sheep, which were valued by the sheriff at $500. J. T. Blanks, the appellee, made claim June 14, 1881, by making oath and giving bond. The writ with the oath and bond was returned to the county court, but was subsequently transferred to the district court, as it would seem, upon the theory that the county court had no jurisdiction of the subject matter. The district court entertained jurisdiction and overruled a motion to dismiss on that ground.
March 18, 1882, the cause was tried without a jury, and judgment rendered in favor of the claimant, Blanks.
Appellee filed a motion to dismiss the appeal upon the ground that the district court did not have jurisdiction of the subject matter of the suit.
Joe H. Stewart and B. B. Rose, for appellant.
W. C. Hutchison and Sheeks & Sneed, for appellee.
A motion has been filed by the appellee to dismiss this appeal on the ground that the court below had no jurisdiction of the cause. It is a suit for the trial of right to property levied on under attachment and valued at $500; and it is claimed that, in such cases, the county and not the district courts have jurisdiction of the cause.
The provisions of our state constitution, as well as those of the Revised Statutes, are somewhat in conflict upon this subject. By the eighth section of the fifth article of the constitution jurisdiction is given to the district courts of all suits for trial of right to property levied upon by virtue of any writ of execution, sequestration or attachment, when the property levied on shall be equal to or exceed in value $500. This clause considered by itself clearly gives to the district court jurisdiction of just such a suit as the one under consideration. But it is said that this grant of jurisdiction is controlled by the sixteenth section of the same article, which provides as follows: “That the county court shall have exclusive jurisdiction in all civil cases where the matter in controversy shall exceed in value $200 and not exceed $500, exclusive of interest.”
This provision is of a general character, and includes within its terms as well suits for the trial of right to property as any others of a civil nature. Standing alone it would give exclusive jurisdiction of suits like the present, where the value of the property levied on did not exceed $500, to the county courts. In such a state of conflict the rules of construction require that the general shall yield to the special provision; i. e., that the one which, in the present case, regulates the special subject of trials of the right of property shall prevail over that which regulates a larger class in which such suits are embraced. Warren v. Shuman, 5 Tex., 442; Sedgw. on Con. & Stat. Law, 242; Vattel's Rules of Construction, No. 8.
The power to hear and determine causes like the present, involving property of exactly $500 in value, having been given to the district courts in express words by the constitution, it could not have been the intention of the makers of that instrument to take away this power in the same article, and in a section following almost immediately upon the one which contained the grant. Their intention would rather seem to have been to give the county courts exclusive jurisdiction of all suits where not more than $500 was involved, reserving to the district courts jurisdiction of such particular suits of this general class as had already been conferred upon them in the previous section. This would in effect engraft an exception upon the general jurisdiction given to the county court in such matters, granting them exclusive jurisdiction over all suits where not less than $200 and not more than $500 should be in controversy, with the proviso that the district courts should have jurisdiction of suits for the trial of the right of property of the value of $500 or above that amount. This we deem to be the true construction to be placed upon these two conflicting clauses of our state constitution.
Passing to the Revised Statutes we find that they provide that district courts shall have jurisdiction of such suits where the property levied on is of the value of $500, and that no such jurisdiction shall be exercised by the county courts. Arts. 1117, 1164.
Whether these enactments are to be viewed as laws passed in accordance with the construction we have placed upon the clauses above cited, or as an effort on the part of the legislature to diminish the jurisdiction of the county courts, and increase that of the district courts accordingly, they effectually, as far as was in their power so to do, grant the right to hear and determine such suits to the district and not to the county courts.
Not so with article 4831 of the same code, which provides that the officer levying the writ upon the property in dispute shall return it, together with the affidavit and claim bond, into the county court, if the value of the property seized is more than $200 and does not exceed $500. If this is to be regarded as an attempt to enact a law in accordance with the constitution, fixing the...
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...that a general provision must yield to a special one so far as necessary to give effect to the particular subject of the latter. Erwin v. Blanks, 60 Tex. 583. Much strength is also imparted to this view by the consideration that the Legislature must be presumed to have known that it was not......
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