Cooper v. McCrimmin

Citations

• 33 Tex. 383

Syllabus

<p>1. A subscription paper, stipulating that the 6ums annexed to the subscribers’ names would be paid to any person who would build a free bridge at a designated place, constitutes a valid contract between the subscribers and any one who afterwards built a bridge in accordance with the tenor of the instrument. (Hopkins v. Upshur, SO Texas, 89, cited by the court.)</p> <p>S. Such an instrument is like a note payable to bearer, so far as relates to the payee ; and when the bridge was completed the consideration was unimpeachable.</p> <p>3. In a suit by the bridge-builder against the subscribers, it was not competent for the latter to vary or contradict the subscription paper by parol proof that the building of the bridge was to be let out to the.lowest bidder—there being no such provisions in the paper itself.</p> <p>4. A subscription paper of the import above indicated may well be regarded as a standing offer, which any one might accept and enforce ; and as it limited no time for the completion of the bridge, the undertaker was entitled to a reasonable time for that purpose. In the present case it is held that the undertaker was guilty of no unreasonable delay, though be did not build the bridge until something over a year after the subscriptions were made—there being evidence that during the intervening winter such work was impracticable, and that the subscribers tacitly assented to the delay.</p> <p>5 It appearing to this court from the present record that other suits upon the same instrument are pending in the court below, with an agreement Of the parties that they shall abide the result of this case, this court directs that the court below render judgments in such other suits conformably to the rulings made in this case, although the judgment below is reversed, and the verdict set aside m the present cause.</p>