State ex rel. American Mfg. Co. of Tex. v. City of Fort Worth

• Decision Date: 07 October 1960
• Docket Number: No. 16130,16130
• Citation: 339 S.W.2d 707
• Parties: STATE of Texas ex rel. AMERICAN MANUFACTURING COMPANY OF TEXAS, Appellant, v. CITY OF FORT WORTH, Appellee.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 707

339 S.W.2d 707

STATE of Texas ex rel. AMERICAN MANUFACTURING COMPANY OF TEXAS, Appellant, v. CITY OF FORT WORTH, Appellee.

No. 16130.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas, Fort Worth.

Oct. 7, 1960.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 4, 1960.

Doug Crouch, Dist. Atty., and Richard U. Simon, Fort Worth, for appellant.

S. G. Johndroe, Jr., City Atty., and Robert R. Goodrich, Asst. City Atty., Fort Worth, for appellee.

MASSEY, Chief Justice.

This was a suit brought to determine whether or not a certain annexation ordinance of Fort Worth, a 'Home Rule' city of Texas, was or was not valid, and if so, whether it had or had not successfully brought into the corporate limits of the City the property of the American Manufacturing Company. On motion for summary judgment the decree in the trial court was in favor of the City.

Judgment affirmed.

The primary contention of appellant is that there has been a failure of annexation because of a deficiency in the City's ordinance in description of the property annexed. It appears that while the City in its original incorporation was described in language as to metes and bounds as is customary in the case of deeds, subsequent annexations have been of areas merely described by fixing a 'beginning point' in the perimeter delineating the 'city limit line', and thence making an encirclement of the newly annexed area as abutting upon said 'line'. When the description of the encirclement returns to a point in the City's perimeter, as it theretofore existed, it concludes the description in language reading substantially as follows: 'thence (northerly, southerly, easterly, or westerly) along the present City of Fort Worth city limits to the place of beginning and containing approximately (blank) square miles of land.' The foregoing was true as applied to the annexation ordinance in question on the appeal.

Appellant is of the opinion that the law should and does require that an ordinance annexing a designated area to be so sufficient in its description that a test thereof would satisfy the requirements of the Statute of Frauds and Fraudulent Conveyances (Vernon's Annotated Texas Civil Statutes Title 65, Arts. 3995-4004), and the Statute of Conveyances (V.A.T.S. Title 3Sec., Arts. 1288-1301). We decline any opinion as to what the law should require in this regard, but we are convinced that it does not require the sufficiency of description for which appellant contends.

Under Legislative authority the City of Fort Worth amended its charter at a time prior to that material to this suit providing authority for the annexation by ordinance of new territory adjacent and contiguous to the existing City. The annexation in question was by ordinance, and the descriptions (additional to that heretofore mentioned with reference to a return to the point of 'beginning' by a return thereto 'along the present * * * city limits') have certain of the boundaries of the areas annexed described in language such as: 'to a point in the Town of Saginaw city limits in the east right-of-way line of the Fort Worth and Denver mRailway Company', 'along the * * * Railway right-of-way line', 'along the * * * Railway right-of-way line in a southeasterly, southwesterly, northwesterly and southwesterly direction to a point in the present * * * city limit line in the west line of Deen Road.'

In relation to the boundary description, as same relates to the existing city limit 'line' upon which the newly annexed property abuts, the appellant's contention must fail. In Kirby Lumber Co. v. Gibbs Bros. & Co., Tex.Com.App., 1929, 14 S.W.2d 1013 the Commission of Appeals held that...