Court Opinion

ID: 9769635
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:56:51.707034+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:05.933906
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
The motion for rehearing is not cast in the mold which is most familiar to us, in that respondents complain because we have followed precedent rather than disregarded it. With vigor and ability it is again asserted that Coyle v. Palatine Insurance Company, Tex.Com.App., 222 S.W. 973, is a voice from the “mauve period in the history of the United States,” and is a mistaken one at that. We are reminded of the words of Lord Atkin in the House of Lords case of United Australia, Ltd., v. Barkclay Bank, Ltd., [1941], A.C. 1; [1940] 4 All E.R. 20:
“When these Ghosts of the past stand in the path of justice clanking their medieval chains, the proper course for the Judge is to pass through them undeterred. We act in the finest common law tradition when we adopt and alter decisions of law to produce common sense justice.”
However, when problems of contractual clauses are involved, precedent is necessarily a highly important factor. Contracting parties generally select a judicially construed clause with the intention of adopting the meaning which the courts have given to it. For the reasons stated in our original opinion, we decline to overrule Coyle v. Palatine.
 In deference to the motion it should be stated that we do not hold nor did we intend to infer that Rule 94 “binds this Court to freeze forever the burden of proof” relating to the exclusionary clauses of an insurance policy. By its express terms, the rule provides that it shall not “be construed to change the burden of proof on such issue as it now exists.” The rule relates to pleadings, but impliedly recognized that there was a doctrine extant in this State which controlled the burden of proof at the time the rule was adopted. The argument over the onus probandis relating to exceptions from the general liability assumed in an insurance policy is an old one and is not altered by the use of an “all risks” clause which is simply a statement of general liability in its broadest form. In Travelers’ Ins. Co. v. Harris, 212 S.W. 933 (Tex.Com.App.1919, holding approved by the Supreme Court) the problem was thoroughly considered with the citation of numerous authorities and it was said:
“ * * * Those courts which treat the contracts as being general, and the clauses declaring what they shall not cover as ‘stipulations added to the principal contract to avoid the promise of the insurer by way of defeasance or excuse,’ hold that these clauses are defensive, and must be pleaded and sustained by the insurer; while the courts which construe the exception clauses as ‘taking something out of the general portion of the contract, so that the promise is to perform only what remains after the part excepted is taken away,’ place the burden of pleading and proof upon the assured to negative them by showing that his cause of action does not come within the exception. (Here follows citation of authorities.)
“In view of the decisions by our Supreme Court, and the indication made in granting the writ in this case, we are of the opinion that the burden rests upon the plaintiff to show that her cause of action does not fall within the excepting clause.”
The questipn of the burden of proof has been settled by the holdings of this Court *316and must remain so until numerous prior decisions are overruled or otherwise abrogated. Rule 94 simply recognizes this circumstance.
Respondents’ motion for rehearing is overruled.