Glasscock v. Hamilton

Citations

• 62 Tex. 143
• 1884 Tex. LEXIS 198

Syllabus

<p>1. Pleading—Release.— A release from plaintiff’s demand, set up in the answer as a legal result from facts not disclosed therein, is bad on demurrer.</p> <p>2. Principal and surety.—The common law rule is, that, when the surety on a joint obligation dies, there is no remedy at law on the obligation against his estate, and in the absence of fraud or mistake, equity will not charge his estate. The rule is different as to obligations that are joint and several. The common law rule above announced, which relieves the estate of a surety on a joint obligation after his death, had no application in Texas from 1840 up to the adoption of the Revised Statutes.</p> <p>3. Release — Joint obligors.— When the obligation of the sureties is joint and several, the discharge of one of them does not ordinarily release the others from payment of their proper proportion of the claim.</p> <p>4. Contribution by surety.— The right of the surety to enforce contribution from his co-surety consists in the fact that he has paid a debt for which he and his co-surety were bound, that was just and could have been enforced at law against them both; and it is immaterial, if the debt was just, whether suit was pending to enforce it or not. But if the principal be solvent, no contribution can be enforced in favor of a co-surety who voluntarily discharges a judgment that could have been collected from the principal.</p> <p>5. Separate property.— The doctrine again announced, that, when the separata property of the wife has undergone changes by reinvestments, it must be clearly and indisputably traced and identified in its various mutations to maintain its separate character.</p> <p>6. Liability op co-surety — Limitation.— Though ordinarily there is no liability for contribution to a co-surety who voluntarily pays the debt after it is barred by limitation, yet if he pays it after judgment on a suit begun before limitation has run, such payment, after a period when the bar of the statute would have b