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Docket Number

No. 12255.

Attorney(S)

Joel W. Cook, Young Young and Jack C. Young, Houston, for appellants. T. J. Stovall, T. J. Stovall, Jr., J. D. O'Bryant and James C. Boone, Houston, for appellees.

Judges

GRAVES, Justice.

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Smart Summary

Case Summary: Gray et al. v. Lewis et al., No. 12255 (Ct. Civ. App. of Texas, Galveston, May 3, 1951)

Factual and Procedural Background

This case is an appeal from a judgment of the 61st District Court of Harris County in a building-restriction dispute. Appellees owned property in the Park Place (Country-Club Addition) area and had erected a business building thereon. Appellants, who also owned property in the addition, sued to have the appellees' building abated or removed as violating restrictions impressed on the addition by its original developers.

At trial, the court submitted special issues to a jury, which the jury answered in favor of the appellants. On motions for judgment by both sides, the trial court concluded it had erred in submitting those issues and determined it should have granted the appellees' motion for an instructed verdict. The court set aside the jury's findings on the first four special issues and entered judgment for the appellees, declaring certain restrictions in a deed to Beulah B. Lewis void insofar as they pertained to the described property. The appellants appealed.

Legal Issues Presented

Whether the alleged deed restrictions and any general plan or scheme for the "Country-Club Addition" of Park Place were sufficient to forbid the appellees from erecting and maintaining the business building on their property.
Whether, as a matter of law, a general plan or scheme existed that imposed mutual and reciprocal restrictions binding on the properties in the area.
Whether any restrictions that may have been adopted expired twenty-five years after January 1, 1924 (i.e., on January 1, 1949), such that they no longer bound the properties at issue.
Whether the trial court properly set aside the jury's favorable findings for appellants and entered judgment for appellees.

Arguments of the Parties

Appellants' Arguments

There was sufficient evidence to raise the factual issues submitted to the jury and to sustain the jury's verdict in favor of appellants on those issues.
The restrictions alleged and found by the jury forbade appellees from erecting and maintaining the business building, and the trial court should have decreed abatement or removal accordingly.

Appellees' Arguments

As a matter of law, there was no general plan or scheme for the overall development of properties in the "country club district" of Park Place that imposed mutual and reciprocal burdens on all similarly situated properties.
If any general plan or scheme existed, the first lots sold bore restrictions expiring twenty-five years after January 1, 1924, so any such scheme was for a twenty-five-year duration and expired on January 1, 1949.
There was no general plan or scheme for Park Place as reflected by the map recorded in Volume 4, Page 10, of the Harris County Map Records; the map contained a corporate reservation (Paragraph 3) reserving broad rights to the developer without restriction of any kind or character.

Table of Precedents Cited

Precedent	Rule or Principle Cited For	Application by the Court
Cannon v. Ferguson, Tex.Civ.App., 190 S.W.2d 831	Cited generally as authority relevant to enforcement/invalidity of restrictions under the circumstances presented.	Listed among authorities supporting the trial court's conclusion that the jury findings should be set aside and the judgment for appellees upheld.
Curlee v. Walker, 112 Tex. 40, 244 S.W. 497	Cited generally as authority relevant to enforcement/expiration of subdivision restrictions or scheme questions.	Relied upon as supporting the court's determination regarding lack of an enforceable general plan or the expiration/limited duration of restrictions.
Goodman v. Bingle, 48 S.W.2d 432 (Tex.Civ.App.)	Cited generally as authority relevant to the legal standards for restricting use of land by covenant or scheme.	Included among the authorities the court invoked to justify setting aside jury findings and entering judgment for appellees.
Hooper v. Lottman, 171 S.W. 270 (Tex.Civ.App.)	Cited generally as authority on the enforceability of restrictions or plan/scheme issues.	Used with the other cases to support the court's legal conclusion adverse to appellants.
Miller v. Babb, 263 S.W. 253 (Tex.Com.App.)	Cited generally as authority concerning restrictive covenants, their scope, or expiration.	Relied upon to support the trial court's action in setting aside the jury verdict and ruling for appellees.
Pierson v. Canfield, 272 S.W. 231 (Tex.Civ.App.)	Cited generally as authority related to the legal principles governing subdivision restrictions and their enforcement.	Included as supporting authority for the court's determination that the necessary facts to enforce restrictions were not shown.
Scaling v. Sutton, 167 S.W.2d 275 (Tex.Civ.App.)	Cited generally for principles bearing on restrictive covenants or scheme questions.	Invoked to bolster the court's conclusion that the law did not sustain appellants' claims.
Scull v. Eilenberg, 94 N.J.Eq. 759, 121 A. 788	Cited generally as supporting authority on restrictions or equitable relief respecting land use restrictions.	Listed among authorities supporting the court's action in setting aside jury findings and ruling for appellees.
Taylor v. McLennon County Crippled Children's Ass'n, 206 S.W.2d 632 (Tex.Civ.App.)	Cited generally as authority relevant to the applicable legal standards in restriction/enforcement disputes.	Used with the other cited authorities to support the court's disposition adverse to appellants.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court's analysis proceeded as follows:

At trial, the court submitted special issues to a jury reflecting what the court then considered the controlling factual questions; the jury answered those special issues favorably to appellants.
On post-trial motions, the trial court concluded it had erred in submitting those issues and determined that, as a matter of law, it should have granted appellees' motion for an instructed verdict (i.e., a judgment notwithstanding the verdict).
The trial court set aside the jury's findings on the first four special issues and entered judgment for appellees, specifically finding that the restrictions contained in the deed to Beulah B. Lewis (dated July 23, 1943, recorded Vol. 1300, p. 226) insofar as they pertained to the described property were void.
The appellate court accepted the trial court's conclusion that the evidence conclusively showed the factual bases the jury found did not, in fact, exist. The court emphasized that those first four special issues were indispensable to appellants' case for enforcing the restrictions; without them, appellants could not prevail.
The court relied on testimony (notably that of Mr. Charlton, a former employee of the Park Place Company) indicating that restrictions expiring twenty-five years after January 1, 1924, were put in early deeds at purchasers' insistence and that the developer retained the ability to change restrictions later. Charlton's testimony supported the trial court's view that no fixed, universally binding plan or scheme had been imposed on the entire Park Place area in a way that became part of the land purchased by appellees.
The recorded map of Park Place (Vol. 4, p. 10, Harris County Map Records) was shown to contain typical dedications and an express corporate reservation (Paragraph 3) reserving broad rights to the corporation "without any restriction of any kind or character," which undercut the claim of an immutable, mutually binding scheme of restrictions.
Based on those factual findings and the cited authorities, the court concluded that the law did not sustain enforcement of the alleged restrictions against appellees and affirmed the judgment entered for appellees.

Holding and Implications

Holding: The trial court's judgment was affirmed. The appellate court approved the trial court's setting aside of the jury's findings on the first four special issues and its entry of judgment for the appellees.

Judgment for appellees affirmed.

Direct consequences and implications:

The court's decree (as approved on appeal) awarded judgment to cross-plaintiffs Beulah B. Lewis and George E. Lewis against the cross-defendants and declared void and of no further force and effect the alleged restrictions in the specified deed to Beulah B. Lewis (dated July 23, 1943, recorded in Vol. 1300, p. 226) insofar as they pertained to the described property: "The Northeast fifty-five (55) feet of Lot One (1) and all of Lots Two (2) to Eight (8), inclusive, of Block One Hundred One (101), of Country Club District of Park Place..."
Appellants (plaintiffs and intervenor) "take nothing" against the defendants; the direct effect is that the appellees' business building was not abated and the restrictions were held invalid as to the described property.
The opinion does not purport to announce a new broad precedent beyond applying existing authorities to these facts; the court relied on established authorities to uphold the trial court's determination that the evidence did not support enforcement of the restrictions on the described property.

Exhibit note: The court attached a small map/sketch of the area (as submitted by appellees' brief) as an exhibit and referred to the recorded map (Vol. 4, p. 10) in its factual analysis.

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GRAY et al. v. LEWIS et al.

GRAVES, Justice.

This appeal is from a judgment of the 61st District Court of Harris County, in a building-restriction case, involving some property in Park Place, in Harris County, owned by the appellees, upon which they had erected a business building, which the appellants (also owners of property in such addition) sought to have abated, or removed, as being violative of restrictions, in 'the Country-Club Addition' to the City of Park Place, impressed thereon by the original developers of such addition.

The court first submitted to a jury special-issues, embodying what it then deemed to be the controlling questions-of-fact raised by the pleadings and evidence, which were answered favorably to the appellants; on consideration of the motions of both sides for judgment, however, the court concluded it had erred in such submission, and, in effect, that it should have originally granted the motion of the appellees for an instructed verdict in their favor; it, therefore, set aside such verdict of the jury, and entered judgment in favor of the appellees, in substance, as follows:

"* * * it being found by the court that, as a matter of law, from the evidence presented, that the motion of defendants and cross-plaintiffs to disregard the findings of the jury to special-issues Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4, should now be granted, and that their motion for a judgment non obstante veredicto should now be granted, and that the motion for judgment filed by plaintiffs and cross-defendants should be denied.

"It is, therefore, Decreed that the plaintiffs, B. J. Breaux, M. G. Gray, Alice C. Woodruff, L. B. Moore, E. J. Price, Jr., E. J. Price, and the intervenor, Matilda Delnay, individually, and in the representative capacity in which they sued, take nothing against the defendants, Beulah B. Lewis, George E. Lewis, and J. H. Lee.

"It is further Decreed that the cross-plaintiffs, Beulah B. Lewis, and George E. Lewis, have judgment against the cross-defendants, B. J. Breaux, M. G. Gray, Alice C. Woodruff, L. B. Moore, E. J. Price, Jr., E. J. Price, and Matilda Delnay, that the alleged restrictions contained in the deed from Park Place Company to Beulah B. Lewis, dated July 23, 1943, recorded in Volume 1300, at Page 226, of the Deed Records of Harris County, Texas, insofar as they pertain to the property described in such deed to-wit:

"The Northeast fifty-five (55) feet of Lot One (1) and all of Lots Two (2) to Eight (8), inclusive, of Block One Hundred One (101), of Country Club District of Park Place, an addition to the City of Houston, in Harris County, Texas, according to the plat of said Addition recorded in Volume 7, at page 64, of the Map Records of Harris County, Texas," are void, and of no further force and effect."

Through an extended number of points-of-error, appellants contend here, in material substance, this: 'There was sufficient evidence before the jury to raise all the issues-of-fact submitted to it, and to sustain its verdict in favor of the Appellants upon each and all of them.'

In other words, appellants urge that the 'restrictions' against the property of the appellees, as alleged by them, and found by the jury to have existed, forbade the erection and maintenance by the appellees of the business-building upon their property, which the trial court should have decreed accordingly.

Whereas the appellees, upon their part, reply in a number of counter-points, the first three of which go to the heart of the case, as contended for by them, in substance as follows:

"(1) As a matter of law, there was no general plan, or scheme, for the overall development of properties in the so-called `country club district' of Park Place, in versal and did not impose mutual and reciprocal burdens on all properties similarly situated;

"(2) If any general plan or scheme was adopted as to `country club district,' of Park Place, the first lots sold were conveyed with the restrictions expiring twenty-five years after January 1, 1924, and such general plan or scheme, if any there was, was for the expiration of such restrictions twenty-five years after January 1, 1924, to-wit, on January 1, 1949;

"(3) There was no general plan or scheme for the overall development of properties in Park Place, as shown by the map recorded in Volume 4, Page 10, of the Harris County Map Records, either alleged or proved, the property of Appellees being located in such Park Place."

In the state of the record, this Court is constrained to uphold the trial court's action.

It is deemed unnecessary to go further than to ground this holding upon the trial court's action in setting aside the jury's findings on the first four of the extended special-issues submitted to it; this for the reason that the evidence conclusively showed that none of the facts therein found by the jury existed, as the trial court so determined, and this Court approves; wherefore, without them, appellants' case for the upholding of the restrictions could not prevail. In other words, they were indispensable to its support.

These authorities support that conclusion: Cannon v. Ferguson, Tex.Civ.App., 190 S.W.2d 831; Curlee v. Walker, 112 Tex. 40, 244 S.W. 497; Goodman v. Bingle, Tex.Civ.App., 48 S.W.2d 432; Hooper v. Lottman, Tex.Civ.App., 171 S.W. 270; Miller v. Babb, Tex.Com.App., 263 S.W. 253; Pierson v. Canfield, Tex.Civ.App., 272 S.W. 231; Scaling v. Sutton, Tex.Civ.App., 167 S.W.2d 275; Scull v. Eilenberg, 94 N.J.Eq., 759, 121 A. 788; Taylor v. McLennon County Crippled Children's Ass'n, Tex.Civ.App., 206 S.W.2d 632.

It is thought that a small map, or sketch, of the area immediately surrounding the property of the appellees, which they have attached to their brief, and to which no objection from appellants has been noted, may be useful in applying the law to the facts. It is, accordingly, attached hereto as a part hereof, as an exhibit.

EXHIBIT `A'

The testimony, and particularly that of the witness, Mr. Charlton, who was connected with the Park Place Company from about the end of the year 1915, until about the end of 1926, is thought to sustain the conclusions-of-fact of the trial court, which have been so embodied in the first three quoted counter-points of the appellees herein; for instance, he testified that the restrictions to expire twenty-five years after January 1 of 1924, were put in the first five deeds after one deed from the Company to himself, because the purchasers insisted on that, and the Company was anxious to get houses built in there; after such first five houses were built, the Company, he testified, stuck to that plan as long as he had been with it, but what happened after he left it in 1926, he did not know; indeed, Mr. Charlton seems to have testified to enough to have made it clear to the trial court that the whole matter of 'restrictions' over the properties this litigation had specifically to do with-as well as other sections of the area, even as to the designated 'country-club addition' of Park Place-was never in fact subjected to such a fixed plan, or scheme, as became a part of the land itself that the appellees became the owners of, at any time; but that, on the other hand, the entire property-called generally 'Park Place'-was left, as to restrictions, in such a condition that it could have been changed by the Company at any time, hence that no restrictions had been placed of record unconditionally as to all the property; in other words, as a whole, it had been retained in such state that the Company might from time to time change any 'restrictions' upon it; indeed, the map of Park Place, recorded in Volume 4, page 10, of Harris County Map Records, was shown to have contained the usual dedication of streets, etc., and, under Paragraph 3 thereof, the Corporation expressly reserved to itself, its successors and assigns, against all the world, this: '(b) the exclusive right to do each and every act in or on said streets or alleys and such other construction as may be necessary or convenient in the judgment of said corporation for propelling machinery, or other purposes, calculated in its judgment to make such 'Park Place' desirable and convenient for business, or resident purposes, and this without any restriction of any kind or character.'

It also appears that the property of the appellees here was described on that map.

The authorities cited, supra, seem to this Court to fully sustain the stated conclusions of the trial court in so having set aside the four findings made by the jury, in determining that the law applied thereto settled the justiciable part of the controversy adversely to the appellants, and in favor of the appellees.

Further discussion is deemed unnecessary, since these conclusions determine the merits of the appeal. They require the judgment so rendered to be affirmed. It will be so ordered.

Affirmed.

GRAY v. LEWIS