Sinclair v. Stanley

Citations

• 64 Tex. 67

Syllabus

<p>1. Execution sale. — A sale of land made under execution issuing from a circuit court of the United States in 1873, and which was not made before the court-house door of the cou'nty wherein the land was situate, but before the door of the federal court-house in Galveston, was not only irregular, but void, and conferred no title on the purchaser, the same being made in violation of state laws. Following Howard v. North, 5 Tex., 290; Riggs v. Johnson Co., 6 Wall., 192, and other cases cited in the opinion.</p> <p>2. Trespass — Damages.— The officers of a street railway company, claiming title to an uninclosed piece of ground, which was afterwards decided in the courts to be a valid title in the company, entered upon, tore down and removed without process of law a house occupied by one holding under a lease from parties claiming title under a federal judgment and execution sale thereunder which was afterwards adjudged to be void. The railway company had before that only such possession as would result from using a track of its road laid.across a subdivision of the tract different from that on which the house stood. In a suit to recover by the party ejected, damages, actual and exemplary, for the alleged wrong and oppression, held:</p> <p>(1) The possession of the company was not such as would justify the violence used, if indeed it could be justified at all.</p> <p>(2) A legal remedy was provided for the company, and their officers were not authorized to expel by force one who had disturbed their actual occupancy.</p> <p>(3) The officers committing the trespass were liable in damages for committing it, instead of resorting to a legal remedy.</p> <p>(4) The error of the court in charging the jury that the plaintiff, who was really a trespasser, was the true owner of the premises from which he was forcibly ejected, was such error as to require a reversal where the verdict was for exemplary damages.</p> <p>(5) In such a suit the actual damages should be ascertained by