Court Opinion

ID: 9653654
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:51:10.627934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:00.605503
License: Public Domain

ON SECOND MOTION FOR REHEARING
We are cited to the case of Crawford v. Crawford, 181 S.W.2d 992, Tex.Civ.App., San Antonio, writ dismissed (1944) wherein the Court construed Rule 377 as providing “that in cases of disagreement among the parties upon the statement of facts the trial judge was given the power and it was made his duty to settle those differences by preparing and filing a statement of facts to ‘ “be by him made to conform to the truth.’ ”
We do not read Rule 377(d) as requiring the trial judge to prepare and file a statement of facts to conform to the truth. We read this rule to require the trial judge, under the circumstances stated, to examine the proposed statement of facts and make it conform to the truth. We are not convinced that the trial judge ever has the duty to prepare and file a statement of facts.
In the event we were in error in not considering this case on its merits, we have decided to pass on the points raised by appellant.
The first three points, jointly briefed, are that there is no evidence to support the findings of the trial court that its bus rolled down the hill and collided with the Terrace Motel, that K. R. Miller was negligent in the manner in which he parked the bus, and that such manner of *713parking was the proximate cause of the impact between the bus and the carport. We overrule these points.
Appellant admitted that its bus was involved in the incident resulting in this suit. Mr. K. R. Miller, who was in charge of the bus at the time, testified in part, as follows:
“Mr. Miller stated that he had brought a bus load of people from Dallas, Texas, to Austin, on April 13, 1967. The people, and himself, were staying at the Terrace Motor Hotel.
He had parked the bus in the space provided by the motel when he arrived and unloaded his passengers on April 13, 1967. He had not moved the bus, and was not aware that the bus was involved in an accident until he was notified by Mr. Cantrell, the night manager of the Terrace Motor Hotel.
At about 10:00 PM, April 14, 1967, he was asleep in his room at the Terrace Motor Hotel. The Terrace Motor Hotel is a large motel, and his room was a considerable distance from where the bus was parked. At about 10:00 PM, his telephone rang, and he answered. The voice identified itself as Mr. Cantrell, the night manager of the Terrace Motor Hotel, and he advised Mr. Miller that a bus had been involved in an accident. Mr. Miller immediately dressed and proceeded to the area where the bus was parked. When he arrived, he discovered the roof of one of the Terrace Motel units was down. An inspection of his bus revealed that a rear window was broken. * * *
At the time Miller arrived at the scene, the bus was parked in the space where he had parked it the day before. Miller denied emphatically that he had any knowledge of how the accident might have occurred. He stated that when he parked the bus, he had placed it in gear with the brake on. He chocked the wheels of the bus to prevent any possibility of it rolling backward. Mr. Miller stated that when he parked the bus he looked around for some large rocks to chock the wheels but was unable to find any and used small rocks. He had not been in, at, around, or near the bus at any time on the night of the accident. He has no idea of how the accident might have occurred. Miller stated that he did not pull the bus back into the parking space after the accident, and does not know who was in the bus or might have been driving the bus at the time of the accident. Mr. Miller further testified that he saw no one suspicious lurking around his bus nor had he seen any person enter or leave the bus. * * *
Mr. Miller testified that when he parked the bus on April 13th (the day before the alleged accident), the keys were left in the bus. He stated that this was not an unusual practice, and he had no instructions from the company to take the keys out of the bus when it was parked. He stated that it was the general practice of other operators to leave the key in the bus when parked.
Mr. Miller stated that Mr. Click arrived sometime after the accident.”
Mr. William S. Click, a witness for ap-pellee, testified, in part, as follows:
“Mr. Click stated that he was the sales manager for the Terrace Motor Hotel, and he lived in the motel unit that was damaged. He stated that he owned a Thunderbird, and it also was damaged.
Mr. Click stated that he arrived at the motel about 10:30 PM or 10:45 PM, and found considerable confusion around the motel unit in which he lived. He was quite surprised to see his roof fallen down, and his nice Thunderbird car damaged.
He stated that he was not at the scene when the accident occurred, and did not have any personal knowledge of what happened. It was his opinion, in view*714ing the bus and in viewing the damages to the motel and the Thunderbird, that the bus had come in contact with the motel, causing the roof to fall on the Thunderbird.
Mr. Click did not know if the bus had rolled back or been driven back. So far as he knew, no employee of the motel had any knowledge as to what might have brought about the accident.”
Police officer, J. Bennett, a witness for appellee, testified, in part, as follows:
Plaintiff called Officer J. Bennett as a witness.
“Officer Bennett testified that he was called about 10:00 PM on the night of April 14, 1967, to investigate an incident. He proceeded to the Terrace Motor Hotel. There he found a section of the roof of one of the motel units on a Ford Thunderbird. A bus with the name ‘Continental Trailways’ painted on its side was parked a short distance away.
Officer Bennett stated that at the time he arrived on the scene, Mr. K. R. Miller, the bus driver, told him that he had moved the bus from its location up against the building back to its original parking place. Officer Bennett further testified that he wrote such statement in his police report.
The bus had a rear window broken, and it was Officer Bennett’s opinion that the rear of the bus (where the window was broken) came in contact with the roof of the motel, thus causing the roof to fall on the Thunderbird.
Officer Bennett testified that he inspected the bus very carefully and it appeared to him that it would be difficult to operate the bus. He made a very careful inspection of the bus.
Officer Bennett stated that when he arrived at the scene, the bus was parked a short distance from the damaged part of the motel. The bus was parked on a sharp incline, and could have rolled back into the motel, although it would have been impossible for it to have rolled from the motel back to its parked position. He said that some person would have had to have driven the bus from the point of impact with the motel, to its parked position. Officer Bennett testified that he could find no one who had seen anyone suspicious around the bus.
Officer Bennett did not see anyone drive the bus to the parked position as it was in that position when he arrived.
Officer Bennett does not have any personal knowledge of how the accident occurred, as he was not present at the scene at the time of the accident.”
This is all the pertinent evidence found in the record.
The above testimony discloses that Mr. Miller, appellant’s driver, parked the bus on a sharp incline, that it rolled down the incline into appellant’s motel and “obviously did the damage” to it.
While Mr. Miller testified that he parked the bus so as to prevent the possibility of it rolling backward it is apparent that he did not do so. Mr. Miller’s testimony need not have been taken at face value by the trial judge, but even so it discloses that he realized that larger rocks than the ones used should have been used to chock the wheels of the bus.
While there were no eye witnesses to the incident, the circumstances were, in our opinion, sufficient for the court to find as he did.
Appellant’s fourth, fifth and sixth points of error, jointly briefed, are that the three findings of fact discussed above were against the overwhelming weight and preponderance of the evidence as to be clearly wrong.
After considering all the evidence before us we overrule these points.
Appellant is a commercial operator of large buses which are difficult to operate. *715It should require very little evidence to find that a large bus parked on a sharp incline was not properly parked when it, of its own accord, rolled backward down the incline into the motel.
Appellant’s seventh, eighth and ninth points are that conclusions of law 1, 2 and 3 of the trial court are erroneous. These conclusions are that there was sufficient evidence to raise the issues of appellant’s negligence and of proximate cause and that appellee was entitled to judgment for its damages.
We overrule these points. Their substance has been determined in disposing of the first six points.
Appellant’s last point is that the trial court erred in not making additional fact findings. We disposed of this point in our original opinion.
Finding no error in the record, we affirm the judgment of the trial court and overrule appellant’s second motion for a rehearing.
Affirmed; second motion overruled.