Trans America Holding, Inc. v. Market-Antiques & Home Furnishings, Inc.

39 S.W.3d 640, 2000 WL 1899061
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedMarch 1, 2001
Docket01-98-00683-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 39 S.W.3d 640 (Trans America Holding, Inc. v. Market-Antiques & Home Furnishings, Inc.) 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
Trans America Holding, Inc. v. Market-Antiques & Home Furnishings, Inc., 39 S.W.3d 640, 2000 WL 1899061 (Tex. Ct. App. 2001).

Opinions

OPINION ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

LEE DUGGAN, Jr., J. (Assigned).

We issued an opinion affirming the trial court’s judgment on August 17, 2000. Appellants filed a motion for rehearing. The motion for rehearing is denied. However, we withdraw our opinion of August 17, 2000, and issue the following opinion in its place.

This is a negligence suit for property damage resulting from a shopping center fire. The trial court entered a take-nothing judgment following a jury verdict finding no negligence. Appellants assert two points of error on appeal. We affirm.

I.

BACKGROUND

Appellee, The Market-Antiques and Home Furnishings, Inc., opened a new store in Houston in the Highland Village shopping center in 1992. During the 1992 Christmas season, the store was decorated with seven artificial Christmas trees with tree lights, distributed in three rooms: the potpourri room, the narrow room, and the Christmas room. The trees remained lighted 24 hours a day during this season.

On October 20, 1992, after appellee’s store was closed for the evening, a fire started in the store, damaging appellee’s facilities and the shopping center. Appel-lee’s neighbors, two stores and a bank, were damaged by smoke, soot, and water from the fire department’s attempt to extinguish the fire. Appellants, the injured parties, sued (1) appellee, (2) the manufacturer of the Christmas light strings, and (3) the manufacturer of the tree. Appellants alleged in their original petition that the Christmas tree lights “short circuited due to a design defect in the lights,” and that “due to a design defect in the Christmas tree, the tree caught on fire when the lights short circuited.” Appellants alleged that appellee was negligent for “creating, or otherwise allowing, a condition that would likely result in a fire”; that the tree manufacturer was negligent and strictly liable for designing and selling a Christmas tree that was not fire-proof or fire retardant; and that the Christmas light manufacturer was negligent and strictly liable for designing and selling unsafe lights. Appellants dismissed the tree manufacturer in their first amended petition; after discovery, appellants settled with the manufacturer of the lights, Kurt S. Adler, for $337,500.00. In their third amended petition, appellants sought recovery from appellee alone, alleging it negligently caused the fire by placing too many lights on the trees, placing electric ornaments on [643]*643the light strings, and leaving the lights on 24 hours a day. Appellants also alleged res ipsa loquitur.

At trial, appellants introduced expert testimony that the fire began in the Christmas tree room with the gold Christmas tree, caused by heat generated from the Christmas lights and/or a loose connection in the light sockets. For the court’s charge, appellants requested an instruction on res ipsa loquitur in connection with their negligence question. The trial court refused this request. The trial court entered judgment on the unanimous jury verdict finding that the fire was not caused by appellee’s negligence. Appellants assert two points of error on appeal. We affirm.

Appellants’ first point of error, a factual sufficiency challenge, urges that the jury’s finding was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. Appellants’ second point of error asserts the trial court committed reversible error when it refused to instruct the jury on res ipsa loquitur.

II.

DISCUSSION

A. Point of error one — Whether the jury’s finding of no negligence was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence

1. Whether appellants waived point of error one by failure to brief

We first address a procedural argument raised by appellee. The negligence question submitted to the jury encompassed both negligence and proximate cause — “Did the negligence, if any, of the parties listed below proximately cause the occurrence in question?” Appellants’ original brief generally challenges the jury’s finding of “no negligence” without expressly stating that the refusal to find proximate cause was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. Ap-pellee contends that appellants waived their factual sufficiency challenge by arguing the issue of negligence on appeal without addressing proximate causation.

Appellants respond that their challenge to the finding on negligence incorporated all of the elements of a negligence cause of action, not simply the breach of duty apart from causation. They cite Texas cases referring to negligence in this broad sense. See, e.g., Firestone Steel Prods. Co. v. Barajas, 927 S.W.2d 608, 613 (Tex.1996) (observing that “a negligence cause of action consists of: (1) a legal duty owed by one person to another; (2) a breach of that duty; and (3) damages proximately resulting from the breach”); Southerland v. Kroger Co., 961 S.W.2d 471, 472 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1997, no pet.) (“To establish negligence, evidence must be produced to establish a duty, a breach of that duty, and damages proximately caused by the breach.”) (emphasis added). Further, appellants expressly assert in their original brief that the evidence at trial established the fire was caused by appellee’s negligence.

We find that appellants’ challenge addresses both the issues of negligence and proximate cause. See Tex.R.App.P. 38.1(e) (“The statement of an issue or point will be treated as covering every subsidiary question that is fairly included.”). We hold that appellants did not waive their factual sufficiency argument for failure to address proximate causation.

2. Factual sufficiency analysis

In reviewing a challenge to the factual sufficiency of a jury finding, Texas courts are “diligent in exercising restraint in the use of their power of conclusiveness over facts” out of long-established deference to jury verdicts. Herbert v. Herbert, 754 S.W.2d 141, 144 (Tex.1988). Thus, we weigh all of the evidence and set aside the verdict “only if the evidence is so weak or the finding so against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence that it is clearly wrong and unjust.” Sisters of Charity of Incarnate Word v. Gobert, 992 [644]*644S.W.2d 25, 28 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1997, no pet.); see also Sims v. Washex Mach. Corp., 932 S.W.2d 559, 565 (Tex.App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 1995, no writ) (determining that a jury finding of no negligence “was not against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence”).

In arguing that the jury’s finding of no negligence hy appellee was against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence, appellants cite the testimony of two expert witnesses, a former City of Houston Fire Chief and an electrical engineer, who stated that the fire started with the gold Christmas tree in the Christmas room.1 Appellants introduced evidence that eight Sylvestri electric ornaments (sold by a different company than Adler) were put into light sockets on the Adler light strings on the gold Christmas tree.2 Appellants’ witnesses opined that the cause of the fire was excessive heat in the gold Christmas tree.

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39 S.W.3d 640, 2000 WL 1899061, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/trans-america-holding-inc-v-market-antiques-home-furnishings-inc-texapp-2001.