Younger Bros., Inc. v. Power

118 S.W.2d 954, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 67
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 2, 1938
DocketNo. 10594.
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 118 S.W.2d 954 (Younger Bros., Inc. v. Power) 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
Younger Bros., Inc. v. Power, 118 S.W.2d 954, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 67 (Tex. Ct. App. 1938).

Opinions

GRAVES, Justice.

As finally determined below, this appeal is from a $5,165.18 judgment in appellee’s favor against appellant, entered by the district court of Jackson County upon a jury’s verdict in response to special issues, wherein it was found that one of appellant’s. trucks, with trailer attached, had negligently damaged the appellee in that sum in a collision with his automobile on highway No. 12, about four miles north of "Edna, Texas, on the night of August 12 of 1934.

Appellant had separately appealed' from a prior order of the same court overruling its plea of privilege to be sued in another county than Jackson, which was prosecuted in the Beaumont Court of Civil Appeals, and determined adversely to the appellant, as reported in 92 S.W.2d 1147.

As indicated, the appeal now at this bar is from a final trial on the merits in the court below; the jury returned a verdict of $5,703 in the appellee’s favor, which, on the filing by him of a remittitur in the sum of $537.82, was then reduced to the final figure stated supra, after a full hearing upon evidence from both sides on motion for new trial.

' At the outset, the appellee objects to this court’s consideration of a number of appellant’s assignments and propositions, upon the ground that they are not in conformity to the statutes arid rules applying in such circumstances. While it seems clear that several of these criticisms are well taken, no specific ruling will be made upon them, under the further conclusion that the appellant does in other assignments raise the structural questions upon which it is determined this appeal should be disposed of.

The briefs of both parties and the record in this court are inordinately long, but since its rule designed to stop that practice, No. XII, was adopted subsequent to their filing here, none of its penalties may be imposed in this instance.

It is this court’s conclusion — after laborious and painstaking study of this entire record — that' this thus-extended controversy presents no new nor unsettled questions of law, but only what may be comprehensively denominated a fact-case; not only so, but that study further convinces it that the great body of the evidence upon the really few controlling questions of fact involved only presented such conflicts as it was the jury’s exclusive province to resolve, and that its verdict upon them — entered, as it is thought to have been, upon sufficient evidence in each instance — finally settled the cause.

As this court sees it, the controlling one of these issues — made so by the pleadings and the evidence of the opposing parties themselves — was this: Which one of the Cfirs was at the time of the collision being operated on its own left-hand side, or the wrong side, of the 18-foot paved highway upon which they so met while going in opposite directions thereon?

Each of the parties so charged the other with being on the wrong side of the road, that that was negligence proximately causing the accident, and each of the drivers of their respective cars (the appellee driving his own car, appellant’s truck being driven by Walter Dawson) testified that he himself was on his own right and proper side of the road, while the other was on his own left and wrong side; the undisputed evidence showed that appellant’s trailer and the appellee’s car came together some 3 to 5 feet from the trailer’s end, and the jury found in answer to specific issues (Nos. 1 to 3, directed at appellant’s driver’s position at that exact time, Nos. 10 and 11 at the appellee’s) that appellant’s truck "and trailer was then being negligently operated on its left side of the center line of the highway, which *956 was a proximate cause of the appellee’s injury, while the latter’s car was not being so wrongfully operated; issues 12 and 14 further acquitted the appellee either of being under the influence of intoxicating liquor while so driving his own car at the time, or of operating it at a greater rate of speed than 45 miles an hour.

In answer to further specially-requested issues Nos. 2, 14, 20, 22, and 24, the ap-pellee was additionally acquitted of having operated his car at the time of and just prior to tire collision either at an excessive and dangerous rate of speed, qr at a greater rate than a person of ordinary prudence in the exercise of ordinary care would have done under the same or similar circumstances, or of having failed to exercise ordinary care — as defined by the court — to have his car under reasonable control, or of having failed to keep a proper lookout ahead for other vehicles on the highway, or of having failed to exercise ordinary care to reduce the speed of his car upon approaching appellant’s truck and trailer.

It thus becomes indisputable that the parties joined issue upon which one was on the wrong side of the road, each regarding that as the crucial test of whose act had constituted negligence and a proximate cause of the collision.

There is further no doubt in this court’s mind — without undertaking to restate or even recapitulate it — that the jury’s favorable answers to the appellee upon each and all of the details of this determinative question were further supported by the evidence; in other words, the cause was tried out below upon that theory, and notwithstanding the number of other theories appellant ably urges on the appeal, this court is unable to see eye to eye with it on any of them; it attacks the special issues on many grounds as not being properly submitted, as being evi-dentiary rather than ultimate in character, as being upon the weight of the evidence, as assuming facts not testified to, as not involving an ultimate fact-issue, either upon the material questions of unavoidable accident, or new and independent cause thereof, along with a number of other complaints.

To the contrary of these contentions, as indicated, the issues so given and determined are thought to have embodied all the really material fact-questions the pleadings and evidence called for; there was no evidence raising any issues of unavoidable accident, or of new and independent cause of this collision;' on the other hand, it was a clear-cut case of the negligence of one or the other of the two participating parties having caused it, and that too as finally referable to which one of them in fact did the particular and fateful thing, towit, negligently operated his car on his own left-hand, or wrong side, of the black stripe down the 'center of the highway, that must inevitably — -perforce of the other attending circumstances so found by the jury — have constituted not only a but the sole proximate cause of the resulting smash-up; there was no testimony of there being another even potentially proximate cause — wherefore it becomes self-evident that “the twain would never have met”, had each been on his own right-hand side as he claimed.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
118 S.W.2d 954, 1938 Tex. App. LEXIS 67, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/younger-bros-inc-v-power-texapp-1938.