Austin v. Weems

337 S.W.3d 415, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 4166, 2011 WL 1102761
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 24, 2011
Docket01-09-00127-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 337 S.W.3d 415 (Austin v. Weems) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Austin v. Weems, 337 S.W.3d 415, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 4166, 2011 WL 1102761 (Tex. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinions

OPINION

HARVEY BROWN, Justice.

Charlotte Austin sued Michael Weems for the wrongful death of her husband, Earvin Austin, arising-from an auto-pedestrian accident. Mrs. Austin appeals the trial court’s judgment on the jury’s finding of no negligence and contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion to exclude the poirit-of-impact opinion testimony of Deputy Henry K. Jordan and overruling her trial objections to his testimony. In addition to his oral testimony, Deputy Jordan’s point-of-impact opinion was contained in five places in three exhibits offered at trial. Mrs. Austin did not timely object to three instances in those exhibits where Deputy Jordan expressed his opinion on point of impact. The denial of a motion to exclude out of the presence of the jury may make it unnecessary to object to documents containing the same opinion in front of the jury. But, to do so, the motion must clearly address not only the opinion,.but each of the different ways the opinion will be presented to the jury through documents. Mrs. Austin’s motion to exclude only addressed the expert’s opinion in his testimony and two of the five instances his opinion was expressed in the exhibits. She was required to object to each part of the exhibits that contained his opinion to preserve error on appeal.

Mrs. Austin also contends on appeal that the jury’s finding was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence and the trial court erred in denying her motion for new trial since Weems’s counsel made an improper jury argument. We overrule her contentions and affirm.

Background

On the morning of December 17, 1995, Earvin Austin left the Big Tree Lounge a little before 2:00 a.m. He parked his pickup truck across from the Lounge on the south-bound shoulder of State Highway 36 — a two-lane road with a 55 mile per hour speed limit — and was going to cross the highway by walking east-bound on foot back into the Lounge’s parking lot. Michael Weems, traveling north, struck and killed Austin in the highway. . .

Charlotte Austin sued Weems for wrongful death. During the trial 13 years after the accident, the jury heard conflicting testimony regarding whether Weems swerved into the lane for opposing .traffic, the south lane, or remained in his own lane, the north lane. In other words, testimony differed as to whether Mr. Austin had already walked more than halfway across the road or was on his side of the road and was preparing to cross. More specifically, there was a swearing match on whether Mr. Austin walked into the northbound lane, where Weems had the right of [419]*419way, or was still on his own side of the road, near his truck parked on the south side.

The location of the point of impact was the primary liability issue at • trial. If Weems were driving on the wrong side of the road and Mr. Austin were near his truck, a jury would likely find some fault for the accident rested with Weems. On the other hand, if Weems were on his own side of the road, and Mr. Austin were walking on the wrong side of the road, a jury would likely find that some fault for the accident rested with Mr. Austin.

Mrs. Austin called eye-witnesses Ger-vaise Summers, James Marshall, Robert Smith, and Brigette Henry to testify at trial in support of her claim that Weems hit Mr. Austin in the south-bound lane. Summers and Marshall testified that they saw the point of impact in the south-bound lane. Henry, a passenger in Mr. Austin’s truck parked on the side of the road in the south lane, testified that the truck shook when Weems’s car passed. Smith testified at trial that he never saw the impact but he did see Weems swerve into the south lane. In his deposition, however, he testified that he saw the accident and Weems was in the north lane, which corresponds with his statement to police that Mr. Austin walked in front of the car and Weems could do nothing to stop the accident. Summers’s and Marshall’s trial testimony also contradicted their earlier deposition testimony.1

Weems relied primarily on his own testimony and the testimony of Deputy Henry K Jordan with the Brazoria County Sheriffs Department. Weems testified that he struck Mr. Austin in the north-bound lane, but that he never saw Mr. Austin until after impact. When Officer Jordan arrived on the scene about ten minutes after the accident, a firefighter was directing traffic and the lanes had been blocked. Witnesses disputed how many cars,' if any, had passed through the accident scene. Deputy Jordan documented the placement of the debris in the north-bound lane, took some measurements, and obtained witness statements at the scene and in the following days.

Over ten months before trial, Mrs. Austin filed a motion to exclude the opinion testimony of Deputy Jordan arguing that he was not qualified to testify as an expert regarding the point of impact, causation, or fault and that his opinion on those subjects was unreliable. The motion was directed at his testimony, not at his accident report, though the motion objects to Deputy Jordan’s “opinions” on point of impact and the factual background referred to two statements in the report.2 The trial court addressed the motion at the close of Mrs. Austin’s evidence out of the presence of the jury. There was no discussion during the. hearing of the five instances in his accident report in which Deputy Jordan opined on the point of impact, but there were again some general objections to his point-of-impact opinions.

During that hearing, Deputy Jordan testified that he had twenty years of law enforcement experience and had investigated hundreds of accidents. He admitted, however, that he had no training in accident reconstruction or physics and that the accident at issue was the only auto-pedestrian fatality he had ever investigated. He did not consider himself to be an [420]*420expert in accident reconstruction and point of impact. He testified — based on his “training, knowledge, skill, experience, common sense, and observations” — that he believed the point of impact was in the north lane where Weems had the right-of-way. He stated he did not need to reconstruct the accident completely to determine the point of impact. His opinion rather was based primarily on the location of the debris and the witnesses’ statements. The trial court denied the motion to exclude expert testimony and ruled that Deputy Jordan’s testimony was rationally based on perception and “the jury was equally well positioned to draw inferences from the data presented.”

Deputy Jordan proceeded to testify before the jury as to point of impact and his opinion that Mr. Austin was at fault. Weems also offered into evidence three components of Deputy Jordan’s accident report — his diagram of the scene, a standard report, and a narrative report of the accident. Weems first offered the diagram of the scene, which indicated the placement of the cars, debris, and point of impact. After the trial court admitted the diagram, Mrs. Austin objected to the point-of-impact opinion shown on the drawing and argued Weems failed to show the proper predicate for the opinion. The trial court overruled the objection as untimely.

Weems later offered Deputy Jordan’s standard report into evidence. His standard report contained, in one section, his conclusion that Austin’s failure to yield the right of way was a contributing factor to the accident3 and, in another section, two sentences that the point of impact occurred when Weems struck Mr. Austin in the north-bound lane. Mrs.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
337 S.W.3d 415, 2011 Tex. App. LEXIS 4166, 2011 WL 1102761, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/austin-v-weems-texapp-2011.