Court Opinion

ID: 9642424
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:57:31.286074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:47.339565
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
CRAMER, Justice.
Appellant has filed a motion for rehearing raising all matters which we on original submission held adversely to it, and specifically attacks our holding that the fact issue raised by the pleadings as to whether appellant is the publisher of the Sherman Democrat was impliedly found in the affirmative by the trial court in support of his judgment. Appellant asserts in substance that the plaintiff wholly failed to make out a case because there was no evidence to support a finding that the Sherman Democrat was published by it, and criticises that part of our holding that the question was not raised in the motion for an instructed verdict.
 Because of such criticism, we deem it advisable to write further on the question. It is true that there is no direct statement in the record by a witness specifically stating that the Red River Valley Publishing Company, Inc., is the owner and publisher of the Sherman Democrat, a very fine and informative newspaper of general circulation in North Texas. Notwithstanding such state of the record, there are other ways to establish a fact than by direct evidence. Here, under the evidence recited in the original opinion, as well as the record as a whole, the case was tried by both parties on the theory that the Red River Valley Publishing Company, Inc., published the Sherman Democrat. Under such record the point that it did not so publish the Sherman Democrat, not contained in its motion for instructed verdict, cannot be sustained. Rule 268, V.A.C.S.
As said in New York Life Insurance Co. v. Doerksen, 10 Cir., 75 F.2d 96, 101:
“The rule requiring a motion for a directed verdict in order to test the sufficiency of the evidence springs from the fact that at common law, and under the Seventh Amendment, questions of law only are reviewable on appeal in actions at law. A motion for a directed verdict is necessary to raise the legal question of the sufficiency of the evidence to support a judgment. That such a motion must be specific has an entirely different origin; it is based upon the settled rule of appellate practice designed to expedite litigation by requiring counsel to apprise the trial court and his adversary of his contention, so that the trial court may have the opportunity of ruling on it understanding^, and his adversary the opportunity of meeting the situation if the ruling is adverse. Consequently it has repeatedly been held that defects which lurk in the record, and which could have been remedied if the point had been seasonably raised below, will not avail on appeal. McCandless v. Furlaud, 293 U.S. 67, 55 S.Ct. 42, 79 L. Ed. 202.”
The appellant’s motion for an instructed verdict did not assert as a reason therefor that there was no proof that it owned or published the Sherman Democrat, but on the contrary in its motion for instructed verdict it did assert: “* * * that as a matter of law the article ptiblished by the Red River Valley Publishing Company in the Sherman Democrat on April 2, 1951, did not identify the plaintiff or any other person; * * *
It is no longer the rule in Texas that a party may stand by, without specifically calling a known omission to the attention of the court, and then seek a reversal in the Appellate Court on a matter which un*862der the rules it was his duty to call to the .attention of the court in his motion for an instructed verdict; and more especially where it is such a question as that the court could have permitted the opposite party to withdraw his announcement and supply such undisputed overlooked fact.
The new Rules were adopted to eliminate, within reason, pure technicalities, not to perpetuate old ones.
Finding no reversible error in the motion for rehearing, it is
Overruled.
DIXON, C. J., not sitting.