Vittitoe v. Junkin

• Decision Date: 19 October 1932
• Docket Number: No. 8878.,8878.
• Citation: 54 S.W.2d 166
• Parties: VITTITOE v. JUNKIN et al.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

Page 166

54 S.W.2d 166

VITTITOE v. JUNKIN et al.

No. 8878.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. San Antonio.

October 19, 1932.

Rehearing Denied November 16, 1932.

Appeal from District Court, Cameron County; Hood Boone, Judge.

Suit by J. K. Junkin against E. M. Lawson and Mary S. Vittitoe. From judgment for plaintiff, Mary S. Vittitoe appeals.

Reversed and remanded.

Graham, Graham & Graham, of Brownsville, for appellant.

Criss & Brown, of Harlingen, for appellees.

FLY, C. J.

This suit was instituted by J. K. Junkin against E. M. Lawson and Mary S. Vittitoe, a feme sole, to recover a debt in the sum of $10,695.36, and to foreclose a vendor's lien on certain lots in the city of Brownsville. It was alleged that Lawson was insolvent and that his residence was unknown. It was alleged that Mrs. Loa E. Junkin was the wife of J. K. Junkin, and conveyed the lots for which the note was given to J. K. Junkin. The wife, although not instituting the suit, became the storm center around whom much of the case revolved, the husband assuming a rather minor and obscure part in the transaction. Appellant pleaded a conspiracy between appellees, the Junkins and Lawson, to defraud her of her property and introduced testimony tending to prove her allegations. Her defense was rejected and judgment rendered against her as prayed for in the petition.

The facts show that on an unfortunate day for appellant, while she was traveling along a highway in ____ county, an accident happened to her automobile, which had attached to it a California license plate. While waiting in the road, waiting, as did Micawber, "for something to turn up," very much of something did "turn up" in the person of E. M. Lawson, who was passing by in an automobile and stopped and offered his services. In assisting about the car his vigilant eye noted the California license plate and he turned the conversation in that direction. Appellant guilelessly confided to him that they had gone to California with the purpose of leaving the "Texas Valley" and had come back to settle her affairs in this state. She told Lawson that she owned 120 acres of land in the valley, which she desired to sell. She confided to him what she desired to obtain for the land, where she was stopping at the time, and other details of her private business. He eagerly devoured all the information and offered his services in the disposal of the property. Lawson followed up his meeting with appellant by ingratiating himself into her good graces until he managed to get her to trade her land for apartment property in Brownsville, and through circuitous dealings deprived her of the apartment. So appellant was left with nothing except possibly the automobile with a California label on it. Lawson, who had claimed to own a ranch of 4,000 acres in California, the land of the setting sun, where even 5 acres of land, or less, is dubbed a ranch—an imperial ranch—and also claimed possessions in Missouri and perhaps in other locations, disappeared when the day of reckoning had come, and like his possessions melted into thin air. He is not a party to this suit, and his deception and fraud are not material except in so far as appellees, and especially Mrs. Junkin has been shown a participant in the fraud.

Whatever amount Lawson obtained through the fraud practiced on appellant, he must have carried off with him, for he has no land or houses, and the picture is presented of the appellant deprived of a valuable tract of land in the rich valley of the Rio Grande, rich as the valley of the Nile, where the orange and the pomelo and the lemon flourish and obtain a perfection unknown elsewhere in America, and nothing to show for it except a rooming or apartment house, on which there is a vendor's lien to secure a debt of more than $16,000. That indebtedness is held by appellees, the Junkins, along with...