Court Opinion

ID: 9826987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:01:59.130931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:20.497238
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[3] In copying the court’s charge on the measure of damages in our original opinion a part of it was inadvertently omitted. The charge in full is as follows: “If you find for the plaintiff, you will 'allow him such sum of money as will now in cash reasonably compensate him for the injury, if any, he may have received as the proximate cause of defendant’s negligence, if any. * * * And you may take into consideration plaintiff’s lessened ability to labor and earn money, if any, since said time, and any physical pain and mental anguish he" may have suffered, if any, as proximately caused by said injury, if any, up to the present time;‘ and you may further take into consideration any lessened ability to labor and earn money in the future that plaintiff may have sustained, if any, and any other physical pain and mental anguish he may suffer in the future, if any, as may be proximately caused by the negligence, if any, of defendant.” The objections to this charge are stated in the original opinion. The charge is not as clear and accurately expressed as it might have been, but we are still of the opinion that it is substantially correct, and that its imperfections are not of such character as to have misled the jury.
The meaning of the first clause of the charge is sufficiently clear, although not expressed in the language usually employed, to justify the conclusion that the jury understood that the injury therein referred to was "such injury as was proximately caused by the negligence of appellant; that is, such injury as appellee received as the proximate result of appellant’s negligence. Nor do we think it is likely that the jury were misled by the last clause of the charge, and induced thereby to believe, as seems to be contended by appellant’s counsel, that in allowing ap-pellee damages they were authorized to give him compensation for some remote, uncertain, and problematic future suffering of body" and mind based upon some future negligence of appellant. Attributing ordinary intelligence to the jury, it must be presumed that they understood by the charge, although awkwardly, and in a measure, inaccurately, framed, that while they were authorized to consider any future physical and mental pain the appellee might probably suffer as a consequence of his injury, yet that any damages allowed must be predicated upon past negligence of appellant and as alleged in ap-pellee’s petition, and shown by the evidence. But especially could no harm have resulted to appellant by reason of the imperfections of the court’s charge under consideration in view of the sixth paragraph of the charge. This paragraph is as follows: “You are further charged that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover for any injuries that he may have received at any other time, or from any other source than the injury, if any, he may have received at the time and place as alj leged in his petition in this cause.” We have reconsidered on this motion all of appellant’s assignments of error, with the conclusion reached that all questions presented have been heretofore correctly decided.
The motion for a rehearing is therefore overruled.