Williams v. Parks

• Decision Date: 01 January 1871
• Citation: 36 Tex. 16
• Court: Texas Supreme Court
• Parties: SAMUEL WILLIAMS v. ATKINSON & CHAPPELL. B. F. PARKS v. ATKINSON & CHAPPELL.

36 Tex. 16

SAMUEL WILLIAMS

v.ATKINSON & CHAPPELL.

B. F. PARKS

v.ATKINSON & CHAPPELL.

Supreme Court of Texas.

1871.

Action upon open account instituted January 3d, 1868, by attachment. Pendente lite, defendants were adjudged bankrupts and received their discharges, which they pleaded in bar. Plaintiffs demurred to the plea, and the court below sustained the demurrer and rendered judgment against the defendants, notwithstanding their discharge in bankruptcy. Held to be error. A plea of discharge in bankruptcy is a good plea in bar to an action commenced in our State courts by attachment, even though the suit by attachment was commenced more than four months previous to the adjudication in bankruptcy. The remedy of the plaintiffs in attachment is in the United States court under the bankrupt law.

APPEAL from Washington. Tried below before the Hon. I. B. McFarland.

The opinion of the court sufficiently indicates the material facts of this case.

Hancock & West, for appellants.

Robards & Blackburn, and Sayles & Bassetts, for appellees.

WALKER, J.

Why the District Court should have disregarded the plea of bankruptcy we are at a loss to understand. The discharge was somewhat inartistically plead, but we hold it to have been sufficiently well pleaded, and it was a bar to the action, and must be so regarded.

The same may be said in No. 342, and the same judgment rendered. The cases stand upon the same principle.

The judgments are reversed and the causes dismissed.

WALKER J.

These were ordinary suits on open account, and the amount claimed by the plaintiffs was not disputed.

The petitions were filed on the 3d day of January, 1868, and attachments were sued out on the same day, and subsequently levied on certain cotton and corn. In both cases the defendant was adjudged a bankrupt, pendente lite, and before the final hearing they were discharged and plead their discharges in bar. The court, disregarding their pleas, rendered personal judgments, and the attached property having been replevied and special bail put in, the judgment required the production and sale of the property.

Our opinion heretofore delivered in these cases was very brief, and perhaps did not sufficiently state the grounds on which it rested; hence we are now considering a motion for rehearing. The discharge in bankruptcy was certainly good in each case, to bar a recovery in personam against the bankrupt. The judgments were therefore erroneous in this respect.

The claims were provable in the bankrupt court, and we must now view the case in the light of the bankrupt law of March 2d, 1867, the 21st section of which...