Ft. Worth & D. C. Ry. Co. v. Loyd

• Decision Date: 19 November 1910
• Citation: 132 S.W. 899
• Parties: FT. WORTH & D. C. RY. CO. v. LOYD.<SMALL><SUP>†</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

132 S.W. 899

FT. WORTH & D. C. RY. CO. v. LOYD.^†

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas.

November 19, 1910.

Rehearing Denied December 10, 1910.

Appeal from Wise County Court; C. V. Terrell, Judge.

Action by Coke Loyd against the Ft. Worth & Denver City Railway Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed and rendered.

Spoonts, Thompson & Barwise, McMurray & Gettys, and J. M. Chambers, for appellant. R. E. Carswell, for appellee.

DUNKLIN, J.

Coke Loyd sued the Ft. Worth & Denver City Railway Company to recover $150 as damages to a shipment of cattle transported by the railway company from Decatur to Ft. Worth. By the judgment from which the railway company has appealed, plaintiff was awarded $143.50 as damages sustained and $20 additional as attorney's fees. Evidently the recovery for attorney's fees was predicated upon an act of the Thirty-First Legislature (1909), which appears as chapter 47, p. 93, of the official publication. That act and the title preceding read:

"An act to regulate the presentation and collection of claims for personal services or for labor rendered, or for material furnished, or for overcharges in freight or express, or for any claim for lost or damaged freight, or for stock killed or injured by any person or corporation, against any person or corporation doing business in this state, and providing a reasonable amount of attorney's fees to be recovered, in cases where the amount of such claims shall not exceed two hundred ($200) dollars, and declaring an emergency.

"Be it enacted by the Legislature of the state of Texas:

"Section 1. That hereafter any person in this state, having a valid bona fide claim against any person or corporation doing business in this state, for personal services rendered or for labor done, or for material furnished, or for overcharges on freight or express, or for any claim for lost or damaged freight, or for stock killed or injured by such person or corporation, its agents or employees, may present the same to such person or corporation, or to any duly authorized agent thereof, in any county where suit may be instituted for the same; and if, at the expiration of thirty days after the presentation of such claim, the same has not been paid or satisfied, he may immediately institute suit thereon in the proper court, and if he shall finally establish his claim, and obtain judgment for the full amount thereof, as presented for payment to such person or corporation in such court he shall be entitled to recover the amount of such claim and all costs of suit, and in addition thereto a reasonable amount as attorney's fees, provided, he has an attorney employed in the case, not to exceed twenty ($20.00) dollars, to be determined by the court or jury trying the case; provided, however, that nothing in this act shall be construed to repeal or in any manner affect any provision of the law now in force giving a remedy to persons having claims of the character mentioned in this act, but the same shall be considered as cumulative of all other remedies given to such a person or persons.

"Sec. 2. The fact that there is no law now in force in this state providing an effectual remedy for persons having such claims as are mentioned in this act, creates an emergency and an imperative public necessity requiring the suspension of the constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several days, and this act shall take effect from and after its passage, and it is so enacted."

Appellant has assigned error to the award of attorney's fees upon the ground that the act quoted above was in violation of article 3, § 35, of our state Constitution of 1876, in that the title recites an act allowing the recovery of attorney's fees in suits upon claims of the character mentioned in the title when the amount of the claim asserted does not exceed $200, while in the body of the act a recovery of attorney's fees is permitted in all suits upon the same character of claims without regard to the amount thereof. Section 35, art. 3, of the Constitution, reads: "No bill (except general appropriation bills, which may embrace the various subjects and accounts for and on account of which moneys are appropriated) shall contain more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title. But if any subject shall be embraced in an act which shall not be expressed in the title, such act shall be void only as to so much thereof as shall not be so expressed."

In Tax Collector v. Finley, 88 Tex. 521, 32 S. W. 525, our Supreme Court in discussing the foregoing provision of the Constitution said: "It was doubtless intended by section 35 to prevent certain practices sometimes resorted to in legislative bodies to secure legislation contrary to the will of the majority: One, that of misleading members by incorporating in the body of the act some subject not named in the title; the other, that of including in the same bill two matters foreign to each other, for the purpose of procuring the support of such legislators as could be induced to vote for one provision merely for the...