Court Opinion

ID: 9675584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:58:31.398839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:35.697841
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING
We find ourselves unable to agree with appellee.
(1) Appellee’s arguments overlook the very important instruction to the jury for its guidance, in answering Special Issue No. 2. For emphasis we repeat that instruction: “ * * * the duty to exercise ordinary care to furnish a reasonably safe place to work does not have reference only to the physical condition of the place itself, but also has reference to the negligent acts, if any, you find of defendanfs employees on the occasion in question.’ (Emphasis ours.)
In the light of the above instruction the effect of the jury’s answer of “No” to Special Issue No. 2 was that the jury did not find from a preponderance of the evidence that appellant had been guilty of any act of negligence with regard to a safe place to work. Yet in answering Special Issue No. 9 the jury found from a preponderance of the evidence that appellant had been guilty of an act of negligence: permitting chatt, etc. to remain in the area of the hump where appellee alighted from the caboose. The two answers seem to us to be in irreconcilable conflict.
(2) We are also of the opinion that ap-pellee’s argument in Paragraph (2) of his contentions becomes wholly untenable when considered in connection with the court’s very plain instruction in connection with the submission of Special Issue No. 2 as above quoted.
(3) We are aware of the holdings in the cases cited by appellee in support of his argument No. (3). But we do not consider those holdings applicable here for these reasons:
(a) The holdings refer to a state procedural rule. The Supreme Court of the •United States, as cited and quoted by ap-pellee in the Arnold case, refuses to recognize state procedural rules in passing on substantive rights under Federal laws. See also 79 A.L.R.2d 574.
(b) The Arnold case itself holds in effect that a specific finding of no negligence will not prevail against a general finding of an unsafe place to work because the latter finding is more exhaustive in its scope. In the case now before us the position is reversed. The finding in answer to Special Issue No. 2 is broader in its scope than the answer to Special Issue No. 9. The substance of the jury’s answer to Special Issue No. 2, when considered in the light of the instruction accompanying it, is that the jury did not find from a preponderance of the evidence that there was -any negligence on the part of appellant with respect to a safe place to work. Such finding, in the view of a majority of this court, collides with the jury’s answer to Special Issue No. 9 where the jury finds specifically from a preponderance of the evidence that there was an act of negligence on the part of appellant; permitting chatt, etc. to remain in the area.
(4)We bow to the holding of the Supreme Court of the United States to the effect that the assertion of Federal rights is not to be defeated under the name of local practice. But we do not consider that rule applicable here, for the question before us involves the substantive rights of the parties — the ultimate issue of negligence. Appellee in his Supplemental Motion for Rehearing says, “Appellee agrees with appellant that the safe place to work issue is an ultimate one.” He then falls back on his theory that since Special Issue No. 2 was not submitted or answered in affirmative form, there cannot be any conflict in the jury’s answers.
Appellee’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
Overruled.