Gerst v. Goldsbury
| Decision Date | 13 November 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. B--857,B--857 |
| Citation | 434 S.W.2d 665 |
| Parties | James O. GERST, Savings and Loan Commissioner of Texas, et al., Petitioners, v. Christopher GOLDSBURY et al., Respondents. |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
Crawford C. Martin, Atty. Gen., Ray McGregor, Asst. Atty. Gen., Austin, Heath, Davis & McCalla, Dudley D. McCalla, Austin, for petitioners.
Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius & Winters, Conrad Werkenthin, Austin, Bobbitt, Brite, Bottitt & Allen, Max D. Allen, and Robert Lee Bobbitt, Jr., San Antonio, for respondents.
Respondents, Christopher Goldsbury and other organizers and stockholders of Mission Savings and Loan Association, aplied in May, 1966, to the Savings and Loan Commissioner of Texas for approval of a charter to operate a new savings and loan association. They proposed to serve a delineated community area of sixty square miles in northeast San Antonio and Bexar County. Approval of the application was protested by seven existing savings and loan associations. After notice and hearing, the Commissioner disapproved the application by order dated September 13, 1966. Respondents filed this suit for judicial review of the order. The trial court set aside the order of disapproval and remanded the application to the Commissioner with instructions to approve the charter application. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed. 425 S.W.2d 14. The Commissioner and the associations protesting approval of the charter application are Petitioners here. We reverse the judgments below and sustain the order of the Commissioner.
Approval by the Commissioner of an application for a charter to establish a savings and loan association is conditioned by Article 852a, Section 2.08, Vernon's Annotated Texas Civil Statutes, as follows:
'The Commissioner shall not approve any charter application unless he shall have affirmatively found from the data furnished with the application, the evidence adduced at such hearing and his official records that:
'(1) the prerequisites, where applicable, set forth in Sections 2.02, 2.03, 2.04, 2.05, and 2.06 have been complied with and that the Articles of incorporation comply with all other provisions of this Act;
'(2) the character, responsibility and general fitness of the persons named in the Articles of incorporation are such as to command confidence and warrant belief that the business of the proposed association will be honestly and efficiently conducted in accordance with the intent and purpose of this Act and that the proposed association will have qualified fulltime management;
'(3) there is a public need for the proposed association and the volume of business in the community in which the proposed association will conduct its business is such as to indicate profitable operation;
'(4) the operation of the proposed association will not unduly harm any existing association.
'If the Commissioner so finds, he shall state his findings in writing and issue under his official seal a certificate of incorporation and deliver a copy of the approved Articles of incorporation and bylaws to the incorporators and retain a copy thereof as a permanent file of his office, whereupon the proposed association shall be a corporate body with perpetual existence unless terminated by law and may exercise the powers of a savings and loan association as herein set forth.'
The Commissioner in his order of disapproval reviewed the evidence before him and stated his findings to be affirmative as to Subsections (1) and (2) of Section 2.08, but negative as to Subsections (3) and (4). The negative findings were these:
'After a careful review of the entire evidence adduced and presented at the hearing, the Commissioner is of the opinion and so finds, that there is insufficient evidence of a public need for the proposed association, and that the volume of business in the community in which the proposed association would conduct its business is not such as to indicate a profitable operation, and that authorization of this charter application would result in undue harm to an existing association in San Antonio, Texas * * *.'
The order of disapproval is to be sustained unless these negative findings were not supported by substantial evidence and the evidence so conclusively required affirmative findings that the Commissioner must be held to have acted arbitrarily or capriciously. Where there is substantial evidence which would support either affirmative or negative findings, the order must stand, notwithstanding the Commissioner may have struck a balance with which the court might differ. The problem is not one of a preponderance of the evidence. Were this not so, the court would be in the attitude of impermissibly substituting its judgment for the expertise of the administrative officer in the exercise of his statutory discretion. Gerst v. Oak Cliff Savings & Loan Association, Tex., 432 S.W.2d 702 (1968); Gerst v. Nixon, 411 S.W.2d 350 (Tex.Sup.1966); Gerst v. Cain, 388 S.W.2d 168 (Tex.Sup.1965); Benson v. San Antonio Savings Association, 374 S.W.2d 423 (Tex.Sup.1963); Phillips v. Brazosport Savings & Loan Association, 366 S.W.2d 929 (Tex.Sup.1963).
In Gerst v. Cain, supra, we referred to the fact that each substantial evidence case must be decided on its own merits and that the facts in one will rarely be the same as in another. We further recognized in Benson v. San Antonio Savings Association, supra, that an order of the Savings and Loan Commissioner disapproving an application must be upheld if his refusal to make any one of the required findings is reasonably supported by substantial evidence. In Gerst v. Nixon, supra, we defined the statutory term 'public need' as being a substantial or obvious community need in the light of attendant circumstances, as distinguished from a mere convenience on the one hand and an absolute or indispensable need on the other. The resolution of this question necessarily encompasses all the relevant circumstances disclosed by the evidence presented to the Commissioner, including, but not limited to, the adequacy of the services of the existing institutions whose facilities are available to the residents of the...
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