Ward Cattle & Pasture Co. v. Carpenter

• Decision Date: 13 February 1918
• Docket Number: (No. 2713.)
• Citation: 200 S.W. 521
• Court: Texas Supreme Court
• Parties: WARD CATTLE & PASTURE CO. v. CARPENTER.

Page 521

200 S.W. 521

WARD CATTLE & PASTURE CO. v. CARPENTER.

(No. 2713.)

Supreme Court of Texas.

February 13, 1918.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of First Supreme Judicial District.

Suit between the Ward Cattle & Pasture Company and William Carpenter. To review judgments of the district court and of the Court of Civil Appeals, the company brings error. Judgments affirmed.

Krause & Wilson, of Bay City, and Proctor, Vandenberge, Crain & Mitchell, of Victoria, for plaintiff in error. Gaines & Corbett, of Bay City, for defendant in error.

PHILLIPS, C. J.

The question in the case is whether the Act of the Thirty-third Legislature (Chapter 72, page 131, General Laws of 1913 [Vernon's Sayles' Ann. Civ. St. 1914, art. 7235]), was effective to exclude Matagorda County from those counties of the State entitled to the benefit of the stock law.

Matagorda was included as one of such counties by the Act of 1909. This act was brought forward in the revision of 1911 as Article 7235. Under it, an election was duly held in March of 1913 in a certain subdivision of the county to determine whether the stock law should be there put into operation, resulting in favor of the law. An injunction suit assailed the validity of the election upon the ground that by the Act of 1911 Matagorda County was dropped from the list of counties that might avail themselves of the law. The election was sustained, the Court of Civil Appeals holding that the caption of the Act of 1911 was such as not to authorize the attempted omission of Matagorda County in the body of the Act. Holman v. Cowden & Sutherland (Civ. App.) 158 S. W. 571. A writ of error was refused in the case. This left the status of Matagorda County as it was under the Act of 1909—that is, Article 7235.

The Act of 1913—involved here—is an amendment of Article 7235. It, likewise, in the body of the Act, omits, or attempts to omit, Matagorda County from the list of enumerated counties entitled to invoke the stock law; and again, as applied to this Act, the question recurs as to whether the title will support Matagorda County's exclusion from the benefits of the law.

The title of the Act is in these words:

"An Act to amend Article 7235, Chapter 6, Title 124, of the Revised Civil Statutes of Texas, 1911, with reference to the mode of preventing horses and certain other animals from running at large in counties named, so as to include Ochiltree, Moore, Sherman, Hansford, Henderson, Cameron, Hartley, Dallam, Concho, Pecos, Reeves, Wharton, Gonzales, Kerr, Kendall, Haskell, Young, Cottle, Hardeman and Hall counties, and declaring an emergency."

No one reading this title could reasonably conclude that the purpose of the Act was other than to merely enlarge Article 7235 so as to have it include in its designation of the counties privileged to prohibit the running of stock at large, the additional counties named. The statement that the...