Citations
- 59 Tex. 587
Full opinion text
Stayton, Associate Justice.—
The judgment rendered cannot be construed as a judgment in personam against the appellant, without doing so upon some other ground than a fair construction of the language in which it is written. The statute regulating the enforcement of liens given to mechanics, laborers and operatives upon railroads, to secure the payment of their wages, does not declare who shall be made defendants in suits brought to foreclose such liens. It is claimed in this cause that the contractor and sub-contractor, under contract with whom the labor was performed, were necessary parties to the action.
This question, under the terms of the statute, is not entirely free from difficulty; but we are of the opinion that the contractor and sub-contractor should have been made parties.
The right of the appellees, who hold by assignments, which we deem valid, the several claims for labor which are made the basis of the action, depends upon two facts: 1st. That the persons through whom appellees claim performed the labor for the railroad under a contract with the contractor or sub-contractor. 2d. That they have never been paid for that labor. The sub-contractor is the principal debtor in this case, and the person to whom the facts necessary to be established to support or defeat the claims must be known, and of which the appellant is not presumed to have knowledge; and if the cause can be tried without making him a party, it may be that the appellant, for want of knowledge of the facts of the case, may have a lien foreclosed upon its property, when in fact no indebtedness, such as would give the lien, existed; and at the same time such judgment and the payment thereof would be no bar to a suit by the sub-contractor against the contractor or the appellant.
It would seem that such parties should be before the court, in actions of this character, as w