CUPPLES COMPANY MANUFACTURERS, APPELLANT,
v.
FARMERS & MERCHANTS STATE BANK, APPELLEE

5th Cir. | 1968-02-12
No. 24530
390 F.2d 184 Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (1968) Positive Treatment
Cited by 8 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.


Holding

Attorney fees are not recoverable under Texas law in this specific type of suretyship claim, thus failing to meet the jurisdictional amount.


Facts & Procedural History

Cupples sold goods to Trimble and presented a check to the Bank, which refused payment. Cupples sued the Bank, claiming the jurisdictional amount was …

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

The appellee Bank agreed to pay checks drawn on it by depositor Trimble in favor of appellant Cupples up to the amount of $10,000. The agreement contained no provision to pay attorney fees upon default. Cupples sold goods to Trimble and presented to the Bank Trimble’s check for $9,903.64. The Bank refused payment.

Cupples’s diversity action against the Bank was dismissed for want of jurisdictional amount. On this appeal Cupples claims that jurisdictional amount is met by the liability of the Bank for attorney fees under Texas law.1 Attorney fees are includible in the jurisdictional amount in controversy, Missouri State Life Ins. Co. v. Jones, 54 S.Ct. 133, 290 U.S. 199, 78 L.Ed. 267 (1933); Crescent Lumber & Shingle Co. v. Rotherum, 218 F. 2d 638 (5th Cir. 1955), but attorney fees are not recoverable in this case under Art. 2226, which has no application to the claim of one who has supplied materials to a principal and sues the surety on his suretyship obligation. New Amsterdam Cas. Co. v. Texas Indus., Inc., 414 S.W. 2d 914 (Tex.1967). The earlier decision of this court in National Sur. Corp. v. United States for Use and Benefit of Olmos Bldg. Materials Co., 327 F. 2d 254 (5th Cir. 1964), reaching an opposite conclusion as to Art. 2226 can no longer be considered controlling on this question of Texas law.

Affirmed.

. Vernon’s Ann.Tex.Civ.Stat. tit. 42, art. 2226 (Vernon ed. 1964): “Any person having a valid claim against a person or corporation for * * * material furnished * * * may also recover, in addition to his claim and costs, a reasonable amount as attorney’s fees, if represented by an attorney.”


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

Previewing 3 of 4 citing cases — full citator treatment, depth of discussion, and citing context are member features.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw