v.
RHONDA S. CREWS, CURTIS CALDWELL CREWS, ANNETTE CREWS, DENISE CLAUDEN CREWS, AND CLAUDE CREWS, JR., THE HEIRS OF EMMA CREWS, VALDA CREWS, AND EVA FAY GROSS, AND ALDINE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF
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No. 05-0270
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AIC Management, Petitioner,
v.
Rhonda S. Crews, Curtis
════════════════════════════════════════════════════
On Petition for Review from the
Court of Appeals for the First District of
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Argued January 23, 2007
Justice O’Neill delivered the opinion of the Court.
Justice Willett filed a concurring opinion.
In
this condemnation proceeding, we must decide whether property descriptions in a
series of quitclaim deeds transferred through constable’s
I. Background
The parcel of land at the center of
this dispute was originally part of a single, jointly owned, 24.36-acre tract
described by metes and bounds and located in “the T.S.
In March 1989, the City of
Tract 12 being 6.0
acres out of T.S.
The file number
corresponded to the
Following the tax judgment, the constable attempted to sell the property at public auction. When there were no bidders, the City acquired the property through a constable’s deed in 1991. The constable’s deed references the tax suit and resulting judgment by cause number, and describes the property being conveyed as follows:
all of the estate, right, title and interest which the said Emma Crews, Valda Crews, and Eva Fay Gross had on the 5th day of February, 1991, or at any time afterwards, in and to the following land and premises, as described in said order of sale, viz:
TR 12 AB 659 T S
AIC Management purchased the land
from the City at a subsequent public sale in 1997. The 1997 constable’s deed
also references the tax suit and judgment and describes the property being conveyed
to AIC as “all of the state [sic], right, title and interest” in “TR 12 AB 659
T S
About three years after AIC acquired
the land, the City decided to expand
The trial court granted the Crewses’ motion for summary judgment, voided the constable’s deeds for insufficient property descriptions, and declared the Crewses the property’s sole owners. The court also granted summary judgment in Aldine’s favor and dismissed AIC’s cross-claim because AIC had no interest in the property. The court of appeals affirmed, holding that the Crewses held superior title under the 1984 partition deed because the constable’s deeds contained insufficient descriptions to allow location of the property with reasonable certainty and therefore failed to convey title. ___ S.W.3d ___. We granted AIC’s petition for review to consider the sufficiency of the property descriptions contained in the constable’s deeds and the county court’s jurisdiction to decide the issue.
II. Jurisdiction
AIC contests the jurisdiction of the
trial court, a county civil court at law in
AIC’s
argument concerns the interplay between the amount-in-controversy limitations
of the general jurisdictional grant to statutory county courts,[3] Tex.
Gov’t Code § 25.0003, the exclusive jurisdictional grant to district
courts for disputes involving title issues, Tex.
Prop. Code § 21.002, and a more specific jurisdictional grant to
statutory county courts in Harris County, Tex.
Gov’t Code § 25.1032. Generally, the subject-matter jurisdiction of
statutory county courts is limited to “cases in which the matter in controversy
exceeds $500 but does not exceed $100,000.”
(a) A county civil court at law in
(c) A county civil
court at law has exclusive jurisdiction in
(1) decide the issue of title
to real or personal property
* * *
Tex. Gov’t Code § 25.1032.
Under section 25.1032’s plain
language, the county civil courts at law in
The $100,000 cap on county court
jurisdiction appears in chapter 25 of the Government Code under subchapter A,
entitled “General Provisions.”
AIC cites our decision in City of
Houston v. West, 520 S.W.2d 752 (
In interpreting statutes, we examine
the language the Legislature chose and may also consider the object sought to
be obtained. See id. § 311.023(1). The legislative history indicates
that section 25.1032, which vested exclusive jurisdiction over eminent-domain
proceedings in
III. The Constable’s Deeds
Before examining the particular
conveyances presented, we first consider the standard by which the sufficiency
of their property descriptions should be measured. To be valid, a conveyance of
real property must contain a sufficient description of the property to be
conveyed. A property description is sufficient if the writing furnishes within
itself, or by reference to some other existing writing, the means or data by
which the particular land to be conveyed may be identified with reasonable
certainty. See Broaddus v. Grout, 258 S.W.2d 308, 309 (
In this case, the court of appeals
held that a heightened standard applies when gauging the sufficiency of
property descriptions contained in constables’ or sheriffs’ deeds made by
virtue of execution
The property in dispute is
identified as “TR 12” in the 1991 and 1997 constable’s deeds, and as “Tract 12
being 6.0 acres” in the tax-suit petition. The “Tract 12” description is a
reference to the numbered “tax tracts” the Harris County Appraisal District
(“HCAD”) uses to divide property for tax purposes. AIC contends this property
description is adequate because, under
The confusion apparently stems from the HCAD’s subdivision of the original 24.36-acre tract for appraisal and taxing purposes. HCAD maps from 1973 show that the taxing authority treated the 24.36-acre tract as 24 acres and labeled it as Tract 12. At some point not ascertainable from the record, Tract 12 was divided into eight three-acre tax tracts. A 2001 HCAD map shows those eight tracts, moving from east to west, as tax Tracts 12A, 12B, 12C, 12D, 12E, 12F, 12, and 12G, respectively. It appears from 2001 tax statements that, at some point, HCAD had assessed 12 and 12G as one six-acre tract.[4]
Another 2001 HCAD map shows the eight tax tracts with Tracts One and Two from the partition deed sketched overtop. The sketches were drawn from a land survey that was conducted in 2000 based on the metes-and-bounds descriptions in the 1984 partition deed. The map shows that Tract One spans portions of tax tracts 12, 12G, 12F, and 12E; none of the tax tracts seem to lie entirely within the 8.51-acre Tract One as sketched on the map. The record does not contain a map showing how Tract 12 was situated at the time of the tax judgment in 1989. It is possible that the maps produced in 2001 reflect what the tax tracts looked like in 1989. It is also possible that in 1989, HCAD still designated or referred to the entire 24-acre portion of land as Tract 12. Or perhaps Tract 12G did not exist as a separate tract in 1989, so Tract 12 was the six acres labeled in 2001 as Tracts 12 and 12G. Without information from HCAD about how the tax tracts were drawn in 1989, we cannot determine whether the conveyance of all the Crewses’ interest in “Tract 12” was sufficient to allow identification of the property. In the past, we have considered similar descriptors to be sufficient or not depending upon additional available information.
In Arnold v. Crockett Independent School District, taxpayers described separate tracts of land in rendering their property for tax purposes, but grouped several tracts together in schedules. 404 S.W.2d at 29. For a number of years, the taxing authority made assessments on the property in bulk as to all the tracts within each schedule, a method the trial court incorporated into its judgment of foreclosure. We held that the judgment for delinquent taxes on several schedules was void because, although some of the tracts within each schedule were adequately described, other tracts could not be located with sufficient certainty. Id. at 28. For example, some tracts of land in the same schedule were identified simply as portions of floating acreage within an abstract and survey, such as “Abstract 926, Levi Speer Survey, 4.9 acres,” and “Abstract 926, Levi Speer Survey, 58 acres.” Id. at 29 n.1. Because the schedule contained both sufficient and insufficient property descriptions, the tax judgment was reversed with respect to the entire schedule. Id. at 29; see Adams v. Duncan, 215 S.W.2d 599, 603 (Tex. 1948) (holding conveyance of “four hundred eighty (480) acres of land [in Jasper County] out of a 640-acre survey patented to Wm. Duncan by the Republic of Texas, Feb. 26th, A.D. 1842, Abstract No. 136, Patent No. 173, Certificate No. 348, Vol. 1” void as not describing a definite tract of land). We remanded the case to the trial court with instructions that the court “receive proof of the properties . . . and describe the properties with such certainty in the judgment that they can be located and identified.” Id. at 29.
In Garza v. City of San Antonio, the court concluded that a tax judgment was void because it contained an insufficient property description. 231 S.W. 697, 699 (Tex. Comm’n App. 1921, holding approved). The tract of land at issue in Garza was assessed in the tax rolls for several years as a five-acre plot, but following a transfer in title the same tract of land was assessed in the tax rolls as a two-acre tract. Id. at 700. The tax petition, which covered delinquent taxes for both the five-acre and two-acre assessments, described the property simply as “[o]ne tract of land described as old city block No. A-6, new city block No. A-6, situated on Trueheart Street, situated within the corporate limits of the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, State of Texas.” Id. at 698. We considered the property description in the petition sufficiently clear to identify the entire five-acre city block. But the tax judgment described the property foreclosed as “that certain tract of land fronting on Trueheart Street, within the corporate limits of the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, Tex., and situated in city block A-6, consisting of two acres of land.” Id. Because the judgment was for only two acres, and nothing in the petition or tax assessment records or judgment indicated which two acres, we held that the exact property could only be identified by “inference and conjecture”; thus, the property description was insufficient to convey title. Id. at 700.
In Willoughby v. Jones, we resolved a dispute similar to the one presented here. 251 S.W.2d 508 (Tex. 1952). The prior owners of Willoughby’s land, which he purchased following a tax judgment, brought a trespass-to-try-title suit claiming that the property description in the tax judgment was insufficient to convey title. Id. at 509. The tax judgment described the property as three separate tracts and included the total acreage for each tract; the judgment then listed the smaller units making up each tract, but with incomplete abstract, survey, certificate and block numbers. Id. at 510–11. We noted that the incomplete descriptions were “of dubious validity.” Id. at 511. However, we considered the judgment’s description in light of the description in the respondents’ petition, which identified the property by referencing three deeds in the property’s chain of title. Id. Due to the close correlation between the property descriptions in the three deeds and the description in the tax judgment, we held that the property the tax judgment intended to describe was ascertainable. Id. at 512. Accordingly, we affirmed summary judgment in Willoughby’s favor. Id. at 514.
The Willoughby decision highlights the Court’s willingness to read property descriptions in tax judgments alongside the property descriptions in related petitions and judgment rolls to identify the property conveyed, thus avoiding the inequity of erasing otherwise valid tax judgments at the public’s expense. At the same time, we recognize the fundamental policy underlying our decision in Garza that a judgment’s property description must be sufficient to allow location of the particular land conveyed. Garza, 231 S.W. at 700.
In this case, indulging all
inferences in favor of the non-movant AIC, we simply
cannot tell whether the property descriptions that appear in the 1991 and 1997
constable’s deeds, read in light of the 1989 tax judgment and the underlying
petition, are sufficient to allow location of the property on the ground.
Throughout this litigation, the record reflects confusion arising from the HCAD’s division of tax tracts, which do not correspond to
the division of ownership in the 1984 partition deed. The City’s tax petition
identifies the Crewses as defendants claiming
interest in the tax-burdened land, and then describes the land upon which delinquent
taxes are due as “Tract 12 being 6.0 acres out of T.S.
The Crewses, citing our decision in Morrow v. Shotwell, 477 S.W.2d 538 (Tex. 1972), contend extrinsic or parol evidence may not be used to furnish the means or data by which the land to be conveyed may be identified. Id. at 540–41. There, the following property description was deemed insufficient because, despite the semblance of a metes-and-bounds description in the deed, a surveyor could not identify the following tract of land:
The North acreage (to be determined by a survey) out of 145.8 acre tract of the Jefferson McGrew Survey No. 245, which acreage lies North of a line beginning at the Northeast corner of the First Tract above described and running North 75 East to a point in the West Boundary Line of Public Highway No. 277, commonly known as the Anson-Hawley-Abilene Highway, Jones County, Texas.
Id. at 539. Although the property could be identified with the aid of the parties, the deed itself did not refer to an existing writing but a nonexistent survey to be conducted in the future. The Morrow court affirmed that the essential elements of a property description may not be supplied by such extrinsic evidence; the deed must furnish within itself or by reference to some other existing writing the means or data by which the land to be conveyed may be identified with reasonable certainty. Id. at 541.
This case is easily distinguishable
from Morrow, however, as HCAD records are not the type of extrinsic
evidence we rejected in that case. The “TR 12” in the property descriptions is
an explicit reference, within the four corners of the deed, to existing
writings, such as tax tract maps, within HCAD records. The property description
in the constable’s deeds references “TR 12 AB 659 T.S.
AIC contends the property
descriptions here, which convey “all of the prior owner’s interest” in “TR 12
AB 659 T.S.
The Crewses contend the tax petition’s description of Tract 12 as six acres, when compared with HCAD records which have identified Tract 12 as three and six acres at different points in time, is a source of ambiguity and invalidity. But we have held that the specification of acreage is the least reliable data point in descriptions of land “and will be rejected if it is inconsistent with the actual land conveyed.” Tex. Pac. Coal & Oil Co. v. Masterson, 334 S.W.2d 436, 439 (Tex. 1960). Here, the constable’s deeds broadly convey all of the Crewses’ interest in Tract 12. If HCAD records show the 1989 version of Tract 12 clearly drawn on a map or described by metes and bounds, the less reliable references to acreage in the tax-suit petition will not render the description ambiguous or insufficient.
IV. Other Issues Raised by AIC
AIC argues that its cross-claims against Aldine should not have been dismissed. AIC’s cross-claims contend that Aldine’s tax liens were extinguished when it failed to join the 1989 tax suit, and that any taxes which accrued between 1980 and 1991 are the Crewses’ responsibility. Because the trial court awarded the property to the Crewses, it dismissed AIC’s cross-claims against Aldine without reaching the merits, reasoning that AIC did not have standing to bring such claims because it lacked any interest in the land. Because we reverse the summary judgment granting title to the Crewses, we also reverse the dismissal of AIC’s cross-claims against Aldine and remand those claims to the trial court.
V. Conclusion
We hold that the trial court, a county civil court at law in Harris County, had jurisdiction to decide issues of title arising out of the City’s condemnation proceedings, and that the record presented does not conclusively demonstrate that the property descriptions in the constable’s deeds were inadequate to convey title as a matter of law. Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings.
___________________________________
Harriet O’Neill
Justice
OPINION DELIVERED: January 25, 2008
[1] Ownership of the 15.85-acre portion of the original tract was adjudicated in a separate suit and is not at issue in this appeal. See AIC Mgmt. v. Baker, ___ S.W.3d ___ (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2003, pet. denied).
[2]
The City based its tax suit on delinquent tax records that describe the
property as “TR 12 AB 659 T S
[3] A “statutory county court” is defined as “a county court created by the legislature under Article V, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution, including county courts at law, county criminal courts, county criminal courts of appeals, and county civil courts at law, but does not include statutory probate courts as defined by Section 3, Texas Probate Code.” Tex. Gov’t Code § 21.009(2).
[4] The 1990 tax statements refer to a six-acre portion as “TR 12” from 1968 forward and make no reference to Tract 12G. From 1960 through 1967, “TR 12” is listed as consisting of three acres. The 2001 statements refer to a six-acre property as “TRS 12 & 12G” for all relevant years, and they reflect that the value of the property exactly doubled between 1967 and 1968.
