J. Weingarten, Inc. v. Carlisle

172 S.W.2d 170, 1943 Tex. App. LEXIS 390
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 20, 1943
DocketNo. 11533
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 172 S.W.2d 170 (J. Weingarten, Inc. v. Carlisle) 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
J. Weingarten, Inc. v. Carlisle, 172 S.W.2d 170, 1943 Tex. App. LEXIS 390 (Tex. Ct. App. 1943).

Opinion

GRAVES, Justice.

This appeal is from a judgment of the 61st District Court of Harris County awarding appellees, Ella Jo Carlisle, a min- or daughter, and her father, W. J. Carlisle, the sums of $5,000 and $1,500, respectively, against appellant, a corporation doing a grocery business in a public store in the City of Houston, as damages found by a jury, in response to special issues submitted, to have been suffered and incurred by each of them as a proximate result of its having negligently left in the aisle of its store a carton containing canned goods, over which Ella Jo fell and was injured.

The appellees had filed .separate suits below, severally seeking the damages each claimed as having resulted from the same accident and alleged negligence, but the trial court consolidated and tried both actions as one, and likewise rendered the judgment upon findings of the jury, allocating the separate damages to each ap-pellee, as indicated.

This is the second appeal to this court of the cause as affects Ella Jo Carlisle, the first one having come here from an instructed verdict against her, which determination was affirmed by this court, as reported in 120 S.W.2d 886, in Carlisle v. J. Weingarten, Inc., on a holding that the minor had been a mere licensee upon the appellant’s premises, to whom it owed no duty not to have such carton in the aisle of its store.

Upon the prosecution of that former cause to it, however, the Supreme Court, as reported in 137 Tex. 220, 152 S.W.2d 1073, reversed that decision, ruling that, under the facts of the cause, the question of whether or not Ella Jo was an invitee upon the appellant’s premises at the time was a question of fact for the determination of the jury.

Both these cited opinions are referred to and made parts hereof, for further description of the cause, as now at bar.

In the consolidated trial from which the present appeal proceeds, a jury found, among other things, that Ella Jo, then a child of eight years of age, had not been a licensee in appellant’s store; that its [172]*172agents and servants had negligently placed a carton containing canned goods in the aisle, over which Ella Jo had fallen, and in consequence was injured; that her fall had not been the result of an unavoidable accident; that the pasteboard carton so left in the aisle had been obvious to her (that is, could have been readily seen by the eye) as she approached it, and that it was not a hidden danger to her; that she had had no osteomyelitis when she entered the store; that she did not fail to keep a proper lookout for her own safety at and immediately before she sustained the fall; and, finally, that Ella Jo’s mother had not been guilty of any negligence with reference to Ella Jo’s being in the store, or in what she did, or failed to do, on the occasion in question.

The $1,500 recovery awarded the father, W. J. Carlisle, was the aggregate allowed him as expenses and damages necessitated by, or proximately resulting to him from, the negligent injury to his minor daughter, for: (a) His services to her until she became twenty-one years of age; (b) the cash-value of medical and hospital bills incurred by him until that time; and (c) the cash-value of the loss of her services he would sustain during her ensuing minority.

On appeal, appellant seeks no other relief against Ella Jo Carlisle, except a reversal of the trial court’s judgment in her favor, and a rendition of the cause against her, upon two claims: (1) That, under the jury’s findings — in response to issues Nos. 9 and 20 — the pasteboard carton in question was obvious to her, and was not a hidden danger, as she approached it; (2) there was no evidence that Ella Jo’s leg struck the pasteboard carton at the place thereon where the infection started, hence the jury’s findings under the other special issues to the contrary were as a matter of law without any support.

The same contentions are likewise relied upon as grounds for its protest against W. J. Carlisle’s part of the adverse judgment, with the added count that the court committed prejudicial error against it in his favor in allowing the jury, under submitted special issue No. 22, to award any of the elements of damage in his behalf therein permitted, because: (1) The evidence was either wholly lacking, or insufficient as a predicate for the allowances the jury made thereon; and (2) the court reversibly erred in refusing to permit appellant to interrogate the witness, Dr. Tuttle, with respect to the medical textbook known as that of Reed & Emmerson, as a means of testing his knowledge of the subject he was testifying about.

Appellant asserts — and no denial by ap-pellees thereof appears — that it requested submission on this trial of all three special issues Nos. 9, 20, and 11, as referred to supra, the answers to the first two determining that the pasteboard carton in the aisle Ella Jo Carlisle was found to have fallen over was obvious and not a hidden danger to her as she approached it at the time, and the third one that she did not fail to keep a proper lookout (as defined by the court) at the time she so sustained her fall; but, in this court, it yet insists that, notwithstanding the child’s tender age of eight years at the time, the findings that the carton was obvious to her (that is, “could be readily seen by the eye”), and was not a hidden danger, convicted her of contributory negligence as a matter of law, thereby rendering the further specific finding that she had not been guilty of any contributory negligence, immaterial and worthless.

It cites many authorities as being relied upon in that respect, under its argument that Ella Jo must have been presumed to have seen the carton, hence was perforce precluded as a matter of law from any recovery whatever, the principal ones being these: Shawver v. American Ry. Express, Tex.Civ.App., 236 S.W. 800 (error refused); Hausman Packing Co. v. Badwey, Tex.Civ.App., 147 S.W.2d 856 (error refused); Marshall v. San Jacinto Building, Tex.Civ.App., 67 S.W.2d 372 (error refused); 45 Corpus Juris, 837; Stimpson v. Bartex Pipe Line Co., 120 Tex. 232, 36 S.W.2d 473; Weingarten v. Brockman, Tex.Com.App., 135 S.W.2d 698; Russell v. Liggett Drug Co., Tex.Civ.App., 153 S.W.2d 231 (error refused) ; Beeville Cotton Oil Co. v. Sells, Tex.Civ.App., 84 S.W.2d 575, 576; Patton v. Dallas Gas Co., 108 Tex. 321, 192 S.W. 1060; Boltinghouse v. Thompson, Tex.Civ.App., 12 S.W.2d 253; Koock v. Goodnight, Tex.Civ.App., 71 S.W.2d 927 (error refused); Summa v. Morgan Real Estate Co., Mo.Sup., 165 S.W.2d 390; Peerless Mfg. Corp. v. Davenport, 136 S.W.2d 779; Fager v. Peverly Dairy Co., 235 Mo.App.

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Bluebook (online)
172 S.W.2d 170, 1943 Tex. App. LEXIS 390, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/j-weingarten-inc-v-carlisle-texapp-1943.