Intercoast Jobbers & Brokers v. Barber

410 S.W.2d 249, 1966 Tex. App. LEXIS 2815
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 14, 1966
DocketNo. 5841
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 410 S.W.2d 249 (Intercoast Jobbers & Brokers v. Barber) 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
Intercoast Jobbers & Brokers v. Barber, 410 S.W.2d 249, 1966 Tex. App. LEXIS 2815 (Tex. Ct. App. 1966).

Opinion

[250]*250OPINION

CLAYTON, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the trial court overruling- a plea of privilege. Appellee filed suit in Ector County, Texas against appellant for the death of appellee’s wife in a truck-automobile collision on November 30, 1963. Appellant Intercoast Jobbers & Brokers presented its plea of privilege to be sued in Dawson County, Texas, where the principal place of business of Intercoast is located at Lamesa, Texas. The trial court overruled the plea of privilege and Intercoast appealed.

Appellant presents two points of error: First, error in overruling the plea of privilege because the evidence at the hearing on the plea established as a matter of law that Alex E. Daugherty, Intercoast’s employee, was outside the course and scope of his employment at the time and place of the accident; and second, error in overruling the plea because the record contains no evidence that an act or omission of negligence on the part of Daugherty or Inter-coast occurred in Ector County, Texas.

No request for findings of fact or conclusions of law was made, and none were filed by the court. Under such circumstances,

“ * * * The trial court’s judgment * * * implies all necessary fact findings in support of the judgment. In seeking to determine whether there is any evidence to support the judgment and the implied findings of fact incident thereto 'it is proper to consider only that evidence most favorable to the issue and to disregard entirely that which is opposed to it or contradictory in its nature.’” (Renfro Drug Co. v. Lewis, 149 Tex. 507, 235 S.W.2d 609, 613, 23 A.L.R.2d 1114 (1951).

And:

“On appeal from an order overruling a plea of privilege every reasonable intendment must be resolved in favor of the trial court’s judgment.” (Citing cases) (James v. Drye, 159 Tex. 321, 320 S.W.2d 319, 323 (1959).

Briefly, the circumstances, taken from the Statement of Facts, are: Except for about six or eight weeks, Alex E. Daugherty, the driver of the truck, had been an employee of Intercoast Jobbers & Brokers, grain and produce truckers, about five or six years, and had just returned to work for appellant immediately before the accident in question. Ón the day of the accident, Daugherty was the driver of a company tractor and trailer loaded with grain, to be carried from Three Leagues, Texas, to California. His home was in Odessa, Texas, and he had been given permission by his employer to spend the night there and start from there for California the next day. This concession was not unusual, although he had no duties to perform in Odessa for his employer. When he approached Odessa on his way to his home, he took the by-pass route around Odessa on his way to his home to miss the lights and traffic in town, and he got on the “Andrews Highway”. Normally, in going to California from where the truck was loaded in Three Leagues, Texas, Daugherty would have gone straight through Odessa on Highway 30, if he were not going to his home. But by the time Daugherty got the trailer loaded and started out from Three Leagues, Odessa would probably have been a normal stopping place for the night, whether he lived there or not. At any rate, on the occasion of the accident, in order to reach his home, Daugherty, about 4:45 in the evening, turned left on to 81st Street from going north on the Andrews Highway, crossed the south-bound highway and entered the intersection of 81st Street with the service road paralleling the Andrews Highway, when there was a collision between the tractor-trailer and an automobile being driven north on the service road by Mrs. Barber, who was killed. There was a “yield«right of way” sign facing Daugherty at the intersection of 81st Street and the service road, and Daugherty [251]*251didn’t come to a complete stop at the sign, but to a “slow running stop”, “barely rolling”. He stated that Mrs. Barber was “going pretty fast”, a matter that he judged by her skid marks which “looked to me in excess of eighty feet”, and “how far she skidded sideways and the damage she done to the truck and the car and how far she slid my truck sideways.” However, Daugherty states that he didn’t actually see the car of Mrs. Barber until he heard her brakes, and the collision occurred immediately after that. Daugherty testified that the place where the accident occurred was outside of, and north of Odessa, about four miles from downtown Odessa.

As to the first point of error, relative to course and scope of employment at the time and place of the accident, the controverting plea to the plea of privilege relies upon section 9a of Article 1995, Vernon’s Ann.Tex.Civ.St., the venue statute. That section provides:

“9a. Negligence. — A suit based upon negligence per se, negligence at common law or any form of negligence, active or passive, may be brought in the county where the act or omission of negligence occurred or in the county where the defendant has his domicile. The venue facts necessary for plaintiff to establish by the preponderance of the evidence to sustain venue in a county other than the county of defendant's residence are:
“1. That an act or omission of negligence occurred in the county where suit was filed.
“2. That such act or omission was that of the defendant, in person, or that of his servant, agent or representative acting within the scope of his employment.
“3. That such negligence was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries.”

Section 9a is thus an exception to the general venue rule. The law applicable to an exception is stated in Goodrich v. Superior Oil Co., 150 Tex. 159, 237 S.W.2d 969, 972 (1951):

“The general rule of venue is, of course, that a defendant shall be sued in his own county, and however many and important are the exceptions contained in the statute, an equal doubt between the exception and the rule is to be resolved in favor of the rule. Stated differently, the application of the exception must clearly appear.” (Citing cases).

Such exceptions cannot be established by implication or doubtful construction. Saigh v. Monteith, 147 Tex. 341, 215 S.W.2d 610, 613 (1948).

Plaintiff’s original petition charges negligence on the part of Daugherty as agent, servant and/or employee of Inter-coast. It follows that plaintiff must prove that Daugherty was in the course and scope of his employment in order to make Inter-coast liable, and since the trial court’s judgment overruled the plea of privilege of In-tercoast, every reasonable intendment must be resolved in favor of such judgment. Appellee relies strongly on the decision in Louis v. Youngren, 12 Ill.App.2d 198, 138 N.E.2d 696, 701, an Illinois case decided in 1956, where the facts were similar, from which the following is quoted:

“* * * We think reasonable men would agree that in the absence of an order to take a specific route, there was no substantial deviation when Earle drove to the Youngren terminal to pick up his clothes and then drove to La Crosse, Indiana, to stay overnight at his own home.

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Related

Rosetta v. Rosetta
525 S.W.2d 255 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1975)
Barber v. Intercoast Jobbers and Brokers
417 S.W.2d 154 (Texas Supreme Court, 1967)

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Bluebook (online)
410 S.W.2d 249, 1966 Tex. App. LEXIS 2815, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/intercoast-jobbers-brokers-v-barber-texapp-1966.