Court Opinion

ID: 9828933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:52:07.348823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:55.076044
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
As said in our original opinion, appellee rested under the burden of showing a want of probable cause for the institution of the prosecution against him, quoting his brief, “for having transported said intoxicating liquors from the state of Louisiana into the state of Texas.” If we correctly construe the Supreme Court’s decision in Fox v. Dallas Hotel Co., 111 Tex. 461, 240 S. W. 517, on the question of contributory negligence, we believe the direct submission of the issue of want of probable cause would not have been proper as embodying a legal conclusion, but fact issues should have been sub*963mitted from which that issue followed as a matter of law. The only submission of such facts is embodied in the following questions, answered as indicated:
“Special issue No. 12: Did plaintiff’s wife, Elsa Teague, have stored in the garage, at plaintiff’s home at 2218 Beauchamps street two or more quarts of whisky on the occasion in question?” Answer: “Yes.”
“Special issue No. 13: If you have answered the foregoing special issue No. 12, ‘Yes,’- and in that event only, you will answer: Was the whisky procured by McReynolds a'part of the whisky stored in the garage?” Answer: “Yes.”
“Special issue No. 14: Did the plaintiff, Henry Teague, have in his grip, at the time of the altercation between him and McReynolds at Houston avenue, the whisky, or any' of the whisky, procured by McReynolds?” Answer: “No.”
' The facts thus found do not establish .the want of probable cause. If Mrs. Teague had two or more quarts of whisky in her garage, if McReynolds procured a part of that whis-ky, and if appellee did not have in his grip; at the time he placed it in his automobile at Houston avenue, any of the whisky which McReynolds procured, yet appellee may have been guilty of the offense with which he was charged, or appellant may have had probable cause for the institution of the prosecution; The jury’s answers to questions 12, 13, and 14 establish only the fact that McReynolds testified falsely as to where he secured the whisky which he delivered to appellant’s special agent’s office. He may have testified falsely on that issue, and yet testified truthfully when he said, again quoting appellee’s brief, “that he saw the liquor, incased in cartons, in appellant’s grip during the altercation at Houston avenue.”
From what we have said, it follows that the issue of want of probable cause was not submitted to the jury. The court then was under the duty of determining that issue from the facts in the' record, and if supported by competent evidence, his conclusion on that issue became as binding on the parties as the jury’s verdict, and would sustain his judgment, provided the omission was not called to the court’s attention or questions embodying the issue were not requested. Appellant filed no. exception to the court’s charge, because of the failure to submit the issue of want of probable cause, nor did he except to the submission of issues 12, 13, and 14. In our judgment, he suffered no injury because of his failure to except to questions 12, 13, and 14, because, as already said, they were evidentiary on collateral issues only. Nor is he foreclosed by the court’s conclusion on the ground that he did not except to the omission in the court’s charge, because he did request the submission of the following question, which the court refused:
“Did or did not the grip placed in the automobile by Henry Teague contain any whisky?”
It appears from the quotation given by us, supra, from appellee’s brief, that appellant’s evidence clearly raised the issue that appellee had whisky in his grip at the time he got off the train and placed it in his automobile, and that McReynolds knew this fact. This evidence formed the basis of appellant’s defense. Without controversy, it appears that appellant had been advised that appellee would have in his grip whisky brought by him from Louisiana into Texas, and that appellee believed this information to be true at the time of the first altercation. Now, had appellant’s requested issue been submitted to the jury, and had they answered it in his favor, we believe it would have folio wed,, as..a matter of law, that the prosecution was instituted on probable cause— not that this finding would have established appellee’s guilt, but the actual presence of the whisky in the grip on the facts of this rqcord would have been so cogent a fact against him that a reasonably prudent man could have acted on this information and been protected from the consequences of a malicious prosecution. Facts that would create in the mind of a reasonably prudent man a belief in plaintiff’s guilt would constitute a defense against the charge of malicious prosecution. So, if appellee is correct in saying that the requested issue did not embody. all the essential elements of probable cause, it is our judgment that the undisputed facts supply the missing iele-ments, and a judgment by the court in ap-pellee’s favor against ah affirmative answer to appellant’s question would have been so against the manifest weight of such facts as to be clearly wrong.
In answer to this question, appellee says:
“This issue does not embody the time or the place when and where the grip was placed into the- automobile.”
There was no issue on these facts. They were undisputed, and it was not necessary to make them a part of the question.
Again, appellee says:
“And does not embody the ultimate issue as to whether appellee had the whisky in his grip, which had been transported by him from the state of Louisiana, or whether McReynolds, at the time he instigated the prosecution, believed that he had the whisky in his grip which he had transported from the state of Louisiana, and, therefore, an answer of the jury to this issue would simply have been a finding upon an evidentiary matter.”
If appellee, in fact, had the whisky in his grip, there is no suggestion in the record that he could have procured it in Texas. Appellant had been informed that lie had secured it in Louisiana. If, in fact, appel-*964lee had the whisky in his grip, no question is made against a reasonable belief on Me-Reynolds’ part that the whisky was transported from Louisiana. A finding of the jury that he testified falsely as to where he procured the whisky that he delivered to the federal authorities does not meet the issue.
Again quoting appellee’s brief:
“The question of whether the grip Henry Teague placed in the automobile contained any whisky was an evidentiary fact pure and simple, for it would not follow as a matter of law from an affirmative answer thereto that there was probable cause for the prosecution. It does not necessarily answer in the affirmative that McReynolds knew there ms whisky in the grip, or saw any in it, and does not answer in the affirmative that Teague had procured that whisky in Louisiana, and brought it across the state line in violation of the Reed Act." (Italics ours.)
If there was whisky in the grip, and if the jury had so found, their answer would have rested upon McReynolds’ testimony entirely. Therefore it would follow that “McReynolds knew there was whisky in the grip.” As already said, if there was whisky in the grip, there is no suggestion against a reasonable belief that it was procured in Louisiana and transported by appellee into Texas.
Appellee insists that appellant has not presented for our consideration a proposition involving the failure of the court to submit to the jury the issue of probable cause. He says:
“In appellant’s brief, he argued that this issue bore on the question of malice; and from caption to signature of his brief never intimated that the issue of probable cause, if one of fact, was erroneously submitted; or that, if the issue were one of fact, any special instruction was requested by him bearing on the said issue of probable cause.”
Appellee is correct in saying that appellant took no exception to the questions submitted by the court, but we believe the point was duly saved by an assignment of error and by a proposition. Appellant’s seventh assignment of error is:
“The court erred in refusing to submit to the jury special issue No. 3 requested by the court, as follows: Did or did not the grip placed in the automobile by Henry Teague contain any whisky? Answer, ‘It did,’ or, ‘It did not.’ ”
His sixth proposition is:
“Where a case is submitted upon special issues, the defendant is entitled upon proper request to have the court submit for the determination of the jury all material issues of fact raised by the evidence. * * * (The sixth proposition is under appellant’s * * * seventh assignment of error.)”
In his statement of his case, appellant shows 'that McReynolds testified that he saw the whisky in the grip at Houston avenue. In arguing the sixth proposition, appellant says:
“The issues of malice and malicious prosecution being material issues, the defendant was entitled to have the jury make such affirmative findings of fact deciding these issues when properly raised by the evidence. If not true, and. if in fact the plaintiff, Teague, did have whisky in his grip, and that the witness Mc-Reynolds believed, or had reasonable grounds to believe, this, it would certainly tend at least to disprove that his acts were actuated with malice.”
It seems to us that appellant’s position is broad enough to cover the error of the court In refusing to submit the question, in so far as it related to probable cause, and that appellant, by his argument, was presenting that issue directly' for our consideration. We were in error in our original opinion in saying that appellant’s “requested issue embodied only evidentiary facts.”
We have given very careful consideration to appellant’s many assignments on this rehearing, but believe that they are without merit, and they are all overruled, except the one just discussed.
Our holding that appellee had a cause of action against appellant on the count of malicious prosecution is supported by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth District in Dougherty v. Payne, 291 Fed. 61, reversing the same case as reported in (D. C.) 276 Fed. 451. In that opinion, the Circuit Court of Appeals cites with approval Hines v. Gravins (Va.) 112 S. E. 869, and Davis v. McMillian, 28 Ga. App. 689, 112 S. E. 913, though this citation of Davis v. McMillian was made by the Circuit Court of Appeals after the Supreme Court of Georgia had overruled that decision holding in accordance with appellant’s proposition. Davis v. McMillian, 154 Ga. 803, 115 S. E. 494.
Because of the court’s refusal to submit appellant’s requested issue, as above given, the judgment in favor of appellee and against appellant on the issue of malicious prosecution is reversed, and the cause remanded for a new trial on that issue alone. In all other respects the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
Affirmed in part, and in part reversed and remanded.