Texas Indemnity Ins. Co. v. Briggs

128 S.W.2d 861, 1939 Tex. App. LEXIS 1146
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMay 18, 1939
DocketNo. 3438.
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 128 S.W.2d 861 (Texas Indemnity Ins. Co. v. Briggs) 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
Texas Indemnity Ins. Co. v. Briggs, 128 S.W.2d 861, 1939 Tex. App. LEXIS 1146 (Tex. Ct. App. 1939).

Opinion

O’QUINN, Justice.

This is a compensation insurance case. The Atlantic Pipe Line Company was the employer, Carlton W. Briggs, appellee, the employee, and Texas Indemnity Insurance Company the compensation insurance carrier. Appellee filed his claim for compensation with the Industrial Accident Board. In due time it made its final award granting compensation to appellee, and from that award appellant filed suit in the district court of Jefferson County to set the award aside. Appellee answered and filed cross action to recover compensation. The case was tried to a jury upon special issues on the answers to which judgment was rendered for appellee as for total and permanent disability. This appeal is from that judgment.

In answer to special issues Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, the jury found that ap-pellee, Briggs, while in the course of his employment, received an injury, and that said injury resulted in hernia, which hernia appeared suddenly and immediately after his receiving the injury, and was accompanied by pain, and that said hernia did not exist in any degree prior to his receiving the injury. These findings are amply supported by the evidence.

In answer to special issue No. 8, the jury found that the operation performed on Briggs for the hernia by Dr. Short, “did not effect a cure”. This finding has ample support in the evidence.

Special issue No. 15, submitted to the court, reads: “Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that the injury resulting in a hernia sustained by Carlton W. Briggs on January 7, 1937, if he did sustain an injury which resulted in hernia, totally incapacitated him to work and earn money?” The jury answered “Yes.”

Appellant objected to this issue “because said issue is erroneously limited to the injury alone and does not allow the jury to consider the effects of said operation and the téstimony that said operation cured said injury, and does not allow the jury to consider the benefits arising from said operation.” This objection was overruled. This ruling is assigned as error. We do not believe there is any merit in the contention. As just stated, the jury found upon ample evidence that the operation “did not effect a cure.” The evidence showing and the jury finding that the hernia resulted from the injury, and that the operation, which was had little more than a month after the injury occurred, “did not effect a cure”, and that appellee suffered total and permanent disability because of the injury — hernia—it is difficult to understand in what way appellee was benefited by the operation. If the operation “did not effect a cure”, and appellee after the operation was still wholly disabled, we fail to see any evidence of any benefit resulting from the operation — in any event if appellee was totally disabled, which disability was permanent, as was found by the jury in answer to special issue No. 16, that was all the law required to entitle him to recover for his disability. If it could be said that the operation was in any way beneficial to appellee, but still because of the result of the injury— hernia — to his whole body, he was totally and permanently disabled from performing *863 the ordinary duties of a laborer, the omission to charge as contended for by appellant was harmless error, if at all error.

But it is contended that the undisputed evidence shows that appellee was benefited by the operation. This contention is based upon the fact that appellee was operated on February 12, 1937 (the injury occurred on January 7, 1937), and on June 18, 1937, he returned to work, and was paid his regular wage of fifty-five cents per hour, and continued to work until July 30, 1937. Appellee so testified. He further testified that Dr. Short, the surgeon who operated on him, told him he could do light work, but not to do or try to do heavy work, and that when he returned to work he did only light work — painting and such like — that they instructed him “whatever I did to take it easy”. That on July 30, 1937, he was “laid off”. That he was told “that they expect men to work when they had them there, and they hired men to do work, and if they could not work, couldn’t do the work, they couldn’t use me, and that I was — they couldn’t use me if I couldn’t do the work”, and that he had not worked since then. That Dr. Short told him his operation was a success, and that at the time he returned to work it was in accordance with the advice of Dr. Short that he could do light work, but that in a short while after returning to work he was let out because he could not do the work desired of him. We do not see any benefits accruing to appellee because of the operation. If, after all, he was unable to work, he was in the same condition as before the operation. We think it proper to say that when appellee received his injury he was taken by his foreman to the “first-aid labatory”, and from there to Dr. J. D. Fuselier, physician for his employer, by Mr. Pemoulie, Assistant Superintendent and chief chemist of his employer, Atlantic Pipe Line Company, and after Dr.' Fuselier got through with his treatment of appellee he was taken to Dr. Willoughby, and finally he was taken to Dr. Robert F. Short at Dallas— Baylor Hospital — and he was operated on by Dr. Short for hernia. It is seen that appellee was at all times being directed and treated by company physicians, and that after the operation, he still acted under the advice and tried to follow the instructions of D’r. Short when he returned to work, and finally was discharged when he was unable to work. Further, Dr. J. M. Jackson of Port Arthur, a practicing physician and surgeon for twenty-one years, testified that after examining appellee several times, once just before the trial of the case, that the operation for hernia was not successful, very incomplete, and was a failure, and that, in his opinion, if appellee, in his then condition, was to undertake to do heavy labor he would have “one of the largest hernias a man could have”; that the condition of appellee was worse at the last examination than when he examined him shortly before — that his condition “Yes, sir. It is getting worse.” Southern Casualty Co. v. Fulkerson, Tex.Com.App., 45 S.W.2d 152. Furthermore, in answer to special issues Nos. 17 and 19, the jury found that the incapacity of appellee to do work was not temporary, and that his disability was not partial. We think the elements of success or of benefit, if any, arising from the operation were reasonably encompassed in these questions. But if not, the failure to include in the charge the matter complained by appellant, under all the findings of the jury, was harmless.

What we have said disposes of appellant’s second proposition that it was error for the court to submit, in the form given, special issue No. 15 to the jury. And likewise of its third proposition that the court erred in refusing to give its special requested charge that in answering special issues Nos. 15 (inquiring as to total incapacity) and 17 (inquiring as to temporary incapacity) and 19 (inquiring as to partial disability) the jury might consider the benefits, if any, to appellee by reason of the operation performed on him for hernia.

We overrule appellant’s fourth assignment asserting that the court erred in submitting special issue No. 16 inquiring whether appellee suffered permanent incapacity to work by reason of the injury sustained by him. The pleadings and the evidence raised the issue of permanent incapacity, and its submission was required.

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128 S.W.2d 861, 1939 Tex. App. LEXIS 1146, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/texas-indemnity-ins-co-v-briggs-texapp-1939.