Le May v. Young

217 S.W.2d 862, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1552
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedFebruary 10, 1949
DocketNo. 12059.
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 217 S.W.2d 862 (Le May v. Young) 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
Le May v. Young, 217 S.W.2d 862, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1552 (Tex. Ct. App. 1949).

Opinion

GRAVES, Justice.

This appeal is from a judgment of th? County Court at Law of Harris County,' entered in part upon a jury’s verdict in response to special-issues submitted, and in part upon independent findings of the court itself from the pleadings, and what it recites to have been “the undisputed facts and evidence,” awarding the appel-lee $600.00 as damages against the appellant as the result of a collision between the appellee’s Ford automobile and a, Buick car found to have been driven by the appellant at the time, but which was owned by her mother, Mrs. Mae M. LeMay.

The issues submitted to a jury and its answers thereto were, in substance, these:

(1) Do you find that Ethel LeMay was operating the Buick automobile on Harrisburg Boulevard? Answer, Yes.

(2) What do you find was the reasonable cash market-value of Young’s Ford automobile in Harris County immediately before that collision? Answer, $850.

(3) What do you find was the reasonable cash market-value of Young’s Ford automobile in Harris County immediately after such collision? Answer, $250.

The trial court’s added findings were, in brief, thus stated by it:

“ * * * the driver of the Buick automobile (which the jury found to be Ethel LeMay), which collided with plaintiff’s automobile, was guilty of negligence as a matter of law in driving and operating a Buick automobile so near the south curb .of Harrisburg Boulevard in the 6700 block as to strike automobiles, including plaintiff’s, which were parked properly at the curb on the south side of said street, and was further guilty of negligence as a matter of law in failing to keep a proper lookout 'for automobiles parked on the south side of Harrisburg Boulevard in the 6700 block of said street, as she drove eastward on Harrisburg Boulevard, and it further appearing to the court that each of said acts of negligence were a proximate cause as a matter of law of the damages to plaintiff’s automobile.”

In protest against the judgment so adverse to her below, appellant presents here five points of error, which may be thus condensed:

“(1) The affirmative answer of the jury* to Special Issue No. 1, inquiring as to whether the Appellant Ethel LeMay was operating the Buick automobile at the time of the collision complained of in Appel- *864 lee’s petition, is against the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence to such an extent as to indicate bias and prejudice, or other improper motive, on the part of the jury.

“(2) The court erred in finding that the driver of the Buick automobile was guilty of negligence in driving too close to the south curb of the street, and in failing to keep a proper lookout, since there is no evidence to substantiate such finding-of-fact.

“(3) The court erred in holding that the negligence, if any, of the driver of the Buick automobile was a proximate cause of the collision, for there is no evidence to substantiate such finding of fact.

“(4) The court erred in entering judgment for the Appellee and against Appellant, for the reason that Appellee wholly failed to establish that the collision in question was not the result of an unavoidable accident.

“(5) The court erred in overruling Appellant’s motion for mistrial. The voluntary statement of the Appellee, to the effect that 'the defendant Mae M. LéMay had insurance, was not responsive to the question propounded by counsel for defendant, and was made solely for the purpose and design to inform the jury that whatever judgment was rendered against the Appellant would be paid by an insurance company and not by the Appellant herself, and that such answer prejudiced and inflamed the jury in favor of the Ap-pellee and against the Appellant, to such an extent as to cause them to render an improper verdict in this cause.”

In the consideration of the cause this Court has been aided by helpful briefs and oral argument from both sides, and has reached these conclusions upon the contentions so made by the appellant, to-wit: It overrules her first four points so challenging — from the different approaches therein made — the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the respective findings of .fact so severally made against her by both the jury and the court.

It is plain that the controlling issue of fact in the whole controversy was the one as to whether the appellant was operating the Buick automobile at the time of the collision; indeed, she so — for all practical purposes — conceded that to be the case, since neither she nor her mother, who was a co-defendant with her in the trial court, but against whom no judgment was rendered, offered any evidence at all as to what were the facts and circumstances under which the collision occurred, or as to the extent of the damage from it to the appellee’s car.

In other words, while the undisputed testimony was that Mrs. LeMay, the appellant’s mother owned the Buick at the time but never drove it herself, having turned its use and the driving thereof over to the appellant exclusively to so handle and drive it as her own, they fnade common-cause against the appellee’s suit in the trial below, upon their jointly and severally-presented sole defense that the appellant had not been the driver of such car at the time of the collision here in question.

This Court has, with much pains, examined and considered all of the evidence relating to the inquiry so made of the jury through Issue No. 1, but cannot hold the finding to have been so against the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence as to authorize its being set aside. On the contrary, it does not find that there was even a preponderance of the evidence against that finding, but rather that the whole body of the testimony on the question of who drove the Buick at the time presented only such conflicts as brought that inquiry properly within the jury’s exclusive province, hence its verdict thereon may not be disturbed by this Court on appeal.

Likewise, as concerns the separate findings so stated by the trial court, there has been no proper attack made in this Court upon any of them; in the first place, the appellee had alleged in his declaration of a cause-of-action that the driver of the Buick automobile had been negligent in driving it so near the south curb of Harrisburg Boulevard — in the 6700 block thereof in the City of Houston — as to strike his own car, which had been properly parked along the curb of the street at *865 that place; that such driver had further been negligent in failing to keep a proper lookout for such parked cars at that place, which had been amply lighted at the time, and that such driver had so driven squarely into the rear-end of his parked car— which had been left in gear, w-ith its- emergency-brake on — with such force as to strip its gears, and catapult it forward 30 or 40 feet into the rear of a truck parked in front of it, and wreck the appellee’s car.

As indicated, there was no contro-version and ample evidence to sustain each' of the recited findings of the court on the matters so plead by the appellee as constituting his cause of action, inclusive of a finding that the stated acts of negligence against the Buick driver had constituted a proximate cause of the collision itself.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
217 S.W.2d 862, 1949 Tex. App. LEXIS 1552, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/le-may-v-young-texapp-1949.