Maryland Casualty Co. v. Gunter

167 S.W.2d 545
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 17, 1942
DocketNo. 11493
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 167 S.W.2d 545 (Maryland Casualty Co. v. Gunter) 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
Maryland Casualty Co. v. Gunter, 167 S.W.2d 545 (Tex. Ct. App. 1942).

Opinion

GRAVES, Justice.

This is a compensation suit. Sam E. Gunter is the employee, Maryland Casualty Company is the insurer, and the Texas Company is the employer.

Gunter, as plaintiff, filed suit against the Casualty Company, as defendant, for total and permanent disability as. a result of injuries claimed to have been sustained on or about May 25, 1941, when a “Christmas Tree” (a 1,400-pound piece of metallic oilfield equipment), fell on him, less 17 monthly installments of compensation at $20 each paid him by it for such injuries immediately following the accident. The defendant alleged, both that whatever incapacity had been suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the injuries on May 25,. 1941, had been cured, and, in any event, that it had been [546]*546solely the result of a pre-existing disease. Special issues were submitted to the jury, and, these having been answered favorably to the plaintiff, the trial court entered judgment in favor of the plaintiff for the maximum benefits under the Compensation Law; in due course of time, the defendant has legally and timely perfected its appeal.

Appellant’s sole points for reversal are these:

“(1) It was error for the trial court to submit special issue No. 5 to the jury, inquiring whether such total incapacity of Sam E. Gunter ‘began’ or ‘will begin’, along with the instruction, ‘Answer by stating the date, if any, otherwise “None” ’, over the timely objection of the defendant that such issue was duplicitous, in that it submitted two issues in one.”
“2. The trial Court erred in submitting special issue No. 4 to the jury, inquiring whether the bodily injury, ‘exclusive of any loss of vision he may have sustained’, was the producing cause of any total incapacity to plaintiff; because same was subject to timely objection by defendant that there was no evidence of total incapacity resulting from injuries on May 25, 1941, ‘exclusive of any loss of vision he may have sustained’, and that the same was too general and was on the weight of the evidence, because it was likely to lead the jury to believe that the plaintiff was totally incapacitated, exclusive of any loss of vision he may have sustained.”

Both these contentions, it is determined, should be overruled. Appellant supports the first of them, that No. 5 was duplicitous, with the citation of Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Shelton, Tex.Civ.App., 130 S.W.2d 903, claiming this cause to be analogous to that one, hence that it and the later case of United Employers Cas. Co. v. Oden, by the same Court, 150 S.W.2d 114, rule the one at bar.

The precise language of given-issue No. 5 here is:

“When do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that such total incapacity, if any, of Sam E. Gunter, began or will begin?
“Answer by stating the date, if any, otherwise ‘None’.”
Whereas the one submitted in the Shelton case was this :
“Has or will plaintiff, A. B. Shelton, suffer any partial incapacity to labor as a result of the injuries, if any, sustained on November 17, 1936? Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. If you find from a preponderance of the evidence that he has not or will not suffer any partial incapacity, let your answer be ‘No’, other wise you will answer ‘Yes’.”

This court has italicized the word “or” in the instruction appended by the trial court to the issue involved in the Shelton case, which instruction and disjunctive, so therein occurring, caused the Waco Court of Civil Appeals to sustain the objection there made that it was duplicitous, as appears from this portion of its opinion:

“In several other cases, issues similar to the one here under consideration, have been held not to submit to the jury two questions of fact in the same issue. Traders & General Insurance Co. v. Patterson, Tex.Civ.App., 123 S.W.2d 766; Fidelity & Casualty Co. of New York v. Branton, Tex.Civ.App., 70 S.W.2d 780; Maryland Casualty Co. v. Brown, Tex.Civ.App., 110 S.W.2d 130; Traders & General Insurance Co. v. Baker, Tex.Civ.App., 111 S.W.2d 837. However, in the cases cited, it should be noted that the issue was not followed with an explanation such as was given in this case. Here, the Court, by instructing the jury, ‘If you find from a preponderance of the evidence that he has not or will not suffer any partial incapacity, let your answer be “No”, otherwise you will answer “Yes”, in effect, told the jury that if they found that the injured employee had not suffered any partial incapacity up to date, or if they found that he would not suffer any partial incapacity in the future, then, in either event, they should answer the question “No.” ’ ”

In other words, it seems plain that the instruction so given was alone the rationale for the holding that such issue was duplicitous, and not that the simple method followed here in this issue No. 5, of merely referring to a past and future time together in the same inquiry was erroneous or objectionable; indeed, that case and those like the one here involved were carefully distinguished by the Waco court in therein citing the Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Patterson case, Tex.Civ.App., 123 S.W.2d 766, along with others of 'its class, as being grounded on different facts from the Shelton case, in that they contained no such misleading instruction. There are a number of additional holdings to the same effect — that is, that it was not error, as was here done, to merely refer to both a past and future time in inquiring when the incapacity [547]*547appeared, but without adding a directive and misleading instruction thereto, as in the Shelton case; in fact, on states of fact not in legal effect different from those here obtaining, our authorities seem to have been of one voice in determining that such an issue is not duplicitous. Fidelity & Cas. Co. of N. Y. v. Branton, Tex.Civ.App., 70 S.W.2d 780, writ of error dismissed; Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Baker, Tex.Civ.App., 111 S.W.2d 837, writ of error dismissed; Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Patterson, Tex.Civ.App., 123 S.W. 766, writ of error dismissed, cited, as quoted, in Shelton case, supra; Southern Underwriters v. Boswell, 138 Tex. 255, 158 S.W.2d 280; Maryland Cas. Co. v. Foote, Tex.Civ.App., 139 S.W.2d 602, writ of error refused; Traders & General Ins. Co. v. Wright, Tex.Civ.App., 144 S.W.2d 626, writ of error refused; Traders & General Ins. Co. v.

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167 S.W.2d 545, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/maryland-casualty-co-v-gunter-texapp-1942.