Opinion ID: 895405
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dr. Thota's Petition for Review

Text: Dr. Thota petitioned our Court for review, and we granted his petition on rehearing. 54 Tex.Sup.Ct.J. 682 (Mar. 18, 2011). Dr. Thota argues that the court of appeals erred in holding that the trial court's inclusion of Ronnie's contributory negligence and the inferential rebuttal instruction constituted an abuse of discretion. Dr. Thota claims that even if there were error in the jury charge, it was harmless, and Casteel 's presumed harm analysis does not apply. Furthermore, Dr. Thota claims that the court of appeals improperly reversed the trial court's judgment based on unassigned error because Young neither raised a Casteel issue before the court of appeals nor made a timely or specific objection before the trial court to assert that the submission of Young's contributory negligence or the inferential rebuttal instruction would improperly commingle valid and invalid theories of liability and, therefore, prevent the appellate court from conducting a meaningful appellate review. Finally, Dr. Thota claims that the appellate court misapplied our holding in Elbaor v. Smith, 845 S.W.2d 240 (Tex.1992), by holding that the trial court abused its discretion by submitting a question on Ronnie's contributory negligence instead of an instruction on Ronnie's duty to mitigate his damages. Young counters that the trial court's submission of Ronnie's contributory negligence and the inferential rebuttal instruction on new and independent cause was an abuse of discretion. According to Young, the court of appeals correctly interpreted Elbaor because Ronnie could not have been negligent in causing the tear to his iliac artery and any fault on Ronnie's part should have been submitted only through an instruction on Ronnie's failure to mitigate his damages. See Elbaor, 845 S.W.2d at 244-45. Young asserts that Casteel 's presumed harm analysis applies because the submitted jury charge was based on one valid and one invalid theory of liability, which obviously confused the jury to such a degree that an appellate court cannot determine whether the jury based its decision on the valid or invalid theory. Young claims that direct mention of Casteel to the trial court was not required to preserve the Casteel error, and Young's timely and specific no-evidence objections to the charge errors were sufficient to inform the trial court of the Casteel problem. Alternatively, Young claims that the trial court's judgment must be reversed even under the traditional harmless error analysis.