Court Opinion

ID: 9830329
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:06:55.832945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:19.349343
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
We have corrected the opinion, on appellants’ exceptions, substituting “appellants” for “plaintiffs” in the paragraph beginning with the sentence, “Appellants made Sidney Lewis, the driver of the car in which Charles was riding, a party defendant.” The context showed the error in our use of the word “plaintiffs.” In our opening statement we make it clear that the suit was instituted by appellees against appellants, Houston Oxygen Company, Inc., and Oliver R. Stanbury. Again, in the paragraph in issue we state that Sidney Lewis was made a party defendant by appellants. On this issue, at appellants’ request, we make the following fact conclusion : “Plaintiffs did not make Sidney Lewis, the driver of the car in which Charles was riding, a party defendant, and sought no recovery whatsoever against him as a joint tort-feasor, but he was made a cross defendant on a cross action filed by appellants in which they sought to recover judgment over and against him as a joint tort-feasor.”
We overrule appellants’ request tb find that appellees offered “no evidence” on the issues of contributions to the support of Charles Applebhy by his father, and that the fáther had made no effort to keep in touch with Charles. In our judgment, the fact conclusions stated in the opinion on these issues have support in the general intendments arising on all the evidence.
Dallas Railway & Terminal Co. v. Boland, Tex.Civ.App., 53 S.W.2d 158, 159, cited by appellants on rehearing, does not support their fourth point against the definition of unavoidable accident. The case a't bar is for damages growing out of a collision, and all the parties to the collision were parties to the suit. In the Bo-land case there .was a. sharp issue as to whether the Dallas Railway & Terminal Company or McVey injured the two boys, or whether the two boys were injured through the negligence of the company or McVey, or whether by their joint negligence. As an abstract statement of the law, the definition in that case of “unavoidable accident” was correct; the issue was that it should have been given an affirmative application to the peculiar facts. Again, the issue on this point in the two cases is not the same. In the Boland case, the court stated the issue as follows: “Each, of appellants objected to the issue as submitted, and requested the court, in lieu thereof, to submit separate issues for the jury to determine whether it was an unavoidable accident in so.far as the bus company and the boys were concerned and whether it was an unavoidable accident in so far as McVey and the boys were concerned; appellants’ contention being that, under the peculiar facts in the case at bar, the jury might have found that as to one of them, or as to each of them if the issue had been submitted separately, that the injury was the result of an unavoidable accident.”
And on the issue, the court made the following legal conclusion: “While the definition as given by the court is the ordinary and accepted definition of an unavoidable accident, where, as in this case, there was no connection between the bus company and McVey, and appellees had alleged entirely separate and distinct acts of negligence on the part of each, the trial court should have submitted to the jury separately as to each defendant the question as to whether the injury was an unavoidable accident.”
In the case at bar, the exception as brought forward in our opinion does not present that point.
On appellants’ assignment against the argument of Judge Fox Campbell, at their request we make the following additional *308fact conclusion: “The negro’s car passed the Coopers and Jack Sanders south of the Town of Moscow; the collision occurred north of the Town of Moscow and Highway 35, which ran through the town of Moscow.”
All other requests for additional fact •conclusions are denied. The motion for rehearing is overruled.