Court Opinion

ID: 9834310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:28:26.828963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:13.671928
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant insists that the rule is now established in this state that in causes tried by juries upon special issues, it is not necessary for a party complaining of the result to file a motion for new trial in order to be heard on appeal, and therefore, if error is committed in the trial court, he need not complain thereat in that court, but may just as effectually do so for the first time on appeal. In a somewhat general way we held to the contrary in the original opinion herein.
We perhaps’ modify or restrict our holding in the original opinion, when we restate that holding to be that when a cause is tried by jury, whether upon a general charge or special issues, all questions relating to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict must be raised in a motion for new trial in the court below so as to give that court an' opportunity to correct any error thus disclosed; if no motion for new trial is filed, then the party aggrieved waives his right to thereafter raise such questions, and assignments of error subsequently filed, and challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, will not be considered on appeal.
Among some of the Courts of Civil Appeals the question seems to be enveloped in some confusion, but this confusion does not appear among the Supreme Court decisions upon the subject. The spirit of the law upon this point found early'and apt expression in this state in an opinion by Mr. Justice Lipscomb, in Foster v. Smith, 1 Tex. 70, in which it was said that the verdict in that case “ought * * * to have been set aside, and no doubt would have been, on motion, in the court below. We will here take occasion to say, that according to what is believed to be the correct rule of practice, no judgment ought to be reversed in this court, merely on the ground that the verdict was not supported by the testimony, unless a motion had been made in the court where the verdict was rendered for a new trial, and overruled ; and then the evidence, and the grounds on which the motion had been made, should be fully spread upon the record.” That this is still the rule in our practice, even under existing statutes, is affirmed in the recent case of Craver v. Greer, 107 Tex. 356, 179 S. W. 862, in the opinion in which Chief Justice Phillips said that—
“Having in mind, as it must be assumed, the rule early announced in Foster v. Smith, 1 Tex. 69, and constantly since adhered to [italics ours], that in jury trials the grounds of complaint against the verdict must, in a motion for a new trial, be called to the attention of the trial court to entitle to revision upon appeal questions essentially involving the jury’s action, it was held that in trials without a jury a different rule prevails; since there the judgment is wholly the act of the court itself, rendered upon a consideration of all phases of the evidence, and presenting a question of law, as to which — the judge having once ruled, and it not being presumable that he will change his ruling — there could be no reason for requiring a motion for ‘a new trial.”
The rule is further clarified and applied in the cases of Railway v. Pemberton, 106 Tex. 463, 161 S. W. 2, 168 S. W. 126; Hess v. Turney, 109 Tex. 208, 203 S. W. 593; Barkley v. Gibbs (Tex. Com. App.) 227 S. W. 1099; Scott v. Bank (Tex. Civ. App.) 66 S. W. 485; Smith v. Hessey, 63 Tex. Civ. App. 478, 134 S. W. 256; Hicks v. Armstrong (Tex. Civ. App.) 142 S. W. 1195; Robertson v. Kirby, 25 Tex. Civ. App. 472, 61 S. W. 967.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.