Plaintiffs brought suit in the Eleventh district court for the parish of Sabine on a judgment for $13,643.03, with interest, rendered in their favor against the defendant by the Forty-First judicial district court of El Paso county, Tex. Six lots of ground, with the improvements thereon, in the town of Zwolle, and 400 acres of land in Sabine parish, were seized as defendant's property under a writ of attachment issued in the suit.
Mrs. Mae Armstrong Davis, the wife of the defendant, intervened in the suit, setting up title to the property attached and praying that her title be recognized and that the attachment be dissolved.
The defendant filed an exception of no cause of action based on the prescription of ten *Page 895
years as provided in Civ. Code, art.
After the case was remanded, both defendant and his wife, the intervener, filed pleas of prescription of ten years under article
By consent of the parties, the judgment was rendered and signed at chambers, and thereafter orders of appeal were entered by the court in which the suspensive appeal bond of the intervener was fixed at $1,000 This bond was furnished by intervener. Subsequently, plaintiffs filed a rule to set aside the order and the bond, on the ground that the amount of the bond was insufficient to sustain the appeal. On the trial of the rule, the court vacated its order granting intervener a suspensive appeal on a bond for $1,000, and rendered another order granting intervener a suspensive appeal on a bond for the amount as fixed by law. A motion for a new trial filed by the intervener was denied, and the matter is now before us for review on the intervener's application for the appropriate writs. *Page 896
The only question submitted to this court for determination is whether the bond for $1,000 as fixed by the district court in its first order is sufficient to sustain intervener's suspensive appeal, or whether, as required by the court's second order, she must furnish for such appeal a bond in an amount exceeding by one-half the judgment of plaintiffs against the defendant for $13,643.03, with interest and costs.
The respondent judge, as shown by his written reasons on file in the record, predicated the ruling of which relatrix complains on the case of Godchaux v. Gall,
In the case presently before us there is no judgment for money against the relatrix, and she is not seeking to suspend the execution of plaintiff's money judgment against the defendant. She is seeking only *Page 897 to suspend the execution of the judgment against her, denying her ownership of the 400 acres of land to which she asserts title. No money judgment can be rendered on appeal against the relatrix save for costs. And the only interest she can have in prosecuting the appeal is to protect from plaintiff's attachment her alleged separate and paraphernal property, worth, probably, only a few thousand dollars. In these circumstances it would be wholly unreasonable to require her to give an appeal bond in an amount exceeding $40,000.
The doctrine applicable to the case is the one announced by this court in State v. Board of Deacons,
For the reasons assigned, the rule nisi herein issued is made absolute, and, accordingly, it is ordered that the judgment of the district court, dated November 10, 1930, filed November 12, 1930, setting aside relatrix's order for a suspensive appeal dated September 29, 1930, and her bond of appeal filed October 9, 1930, be annulled. It is further ordered that the order of the judge of the district court, dated September 29, 1930, granting a relatrix a suspensive appeal from the judgment rendered against her on the same day, and the appeal bond filed by relatrix on October 9, 1930, be reinstated and decreed to be in full force and effect, entitling relatrix to a suspensive appeal to this court from said judgment. The costs of these proceedings to be paid by the respondents Blanche I.A.D. White, Maggie Lucille Davis Steinfeld, and Irma Louise Davis. *Page 898
