Gano v. Palo Pinto County
| Decision Date | 01 June 1888 |
| Parties | GANO <I>et al.</I> v. PALO PINTO COUNTY. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
E. P. Nicholson and W. B. Gano, for appellants. McCall & McCall, for appellee.
The appellants brought this suit in the court below. Upon a former trial they obtained a judgment, which was reversed on appeal, upon the ground that the court erred in overruling the demurrer to the petition. 60 Tex. 250. After the cause was remanded to the district court, the plaintiffs amended their petition. Upon the second trial a demurrer was sustained to the amended petition, and the suit dismissed. In the former opinion it was held that the contract made between the commissioners' court of Palo Pinto county and Veal, Haynes & Caruthers, by which the latter were employed to subdivide, map, and classify the school lands belonging to the county, and which is here sued upon, was an agreement for the performance of services involving a personal trust in the agents or contractors, and that, therefore, they could not perform the work through subcontractors so as to bind the county. The amended petition seeks by additional allegations to avoid the effect of that ruling. The additional averments, briefly stated, are that, when the contract was entered into with the commissioners, they knew that Veal, Haynes & Caruthers had no personal fitness to perform the work; that they expected to employ some competent person to do it, and that they were employed with that understanding; but that, by inadvertence, in entering the order upon the minutes of the court, the clerk made a mistake, and omitted so much of the agreement as authorized the contractors to employ substitutes. It is also alleged "that it had long been the custom in the state of Texas, where similar contracts were made by counties to have their school lands surveyed, classified, and mapped, for the party contracted with to employ competent parties to do the work, even when no express authority to do the work [was] given in the contract with the county." The order of the court is sued upon as a written contract, and a copy of it is annexed to the petition as the foundation of the action. The plaintiffs cannot be permitted to prove simply that there was an understanding between the commissioners and the contractors that they should employ subcontractors, because this would be to introduce oral evidence to vary a written contract. Are the allegations sufficient to admit of a...
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Hill County v. Colonial Trust Co.
...certain terms of payment. Article 2349, Revised Civil Statutes; Brown et al. v. Reese, 67 Tex. 318, 3 S. W. 292; Gano et al. v. Palo Pinto County, 71 Tex. 99, 8 S. W. 634; Wagner et al. v. Porter (Tex. Civ. App.) 56 S. W. 560; Fayette County v. Krause, 31 Tex. Civ. App. 569, 73 S. W. 51 (wr......
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...a court of record, and speaks through its minutes, and not by the mouths of the members of the body.' Judge Gaines in Gano v. County of Palo Pinto, 71 Tex. 99, 8 S.W. 634. There is no record of any such 'contract' entered into by either of the two boards of equalization. Nor is there any ev......
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