Court Opinion

ID: 9832784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:11:50.43966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:52.517959
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In this" motion the plaintiff contends that our holding with reference to the sufficiency of the evidence in .this case to sustain the verdict of the jury is in conflict with the case of Federal Surety Co. v. Shigley (Tex. Civ. App.) 7 S.W.(2d) 607, 609. We do not think this interpretation of our former opinion is correct.
In the Shigley Case, we say: “In fixing the method of ascertaining the measure of defendant’s compensation, it is apparent (1) that he must have been employed for substantially the whole of the year preceding his injury; (2) if he was not so employed, but was only employed for a part of the time, *346then the measure of his compensation is 300 times the average daily wage which an employee of the same class, working substantially the whole of such immediately preceding year, in the same or similar employment, in the same or a neighboring place, shall have earned in such employment during the days when so employed. It will therefore he seen that neither the pleading of defendant nor the evidence before the court complied with the .requirements of this statute.”
In the case at bar, there is no question but what the defendant was attempting to follow this statute, and the question which we attempted to decide in this case was whether or not the evidence as offered by the defendant complied with the rule which he was seeking to enforce to secure his compensation and held:
“This is properly pleaded in the defendant’s cross-action and the evidence furnishes a proper basis for the verdict of the jury and the judgment of the court. * * *
“The defendant testified that he had been working for his then employer for only a short time at the time of the accident. It was further testified that he knew the average daily wage for employees doing the same or similar work as that he was doing at the time of his injury, for a year prior to the time of his injury for the days they worked and that it was $6.00 a day.”
It is true that on cross-examination he testified as follows: “I do not know that I know or could recall of anybody that worked from December 1, 1928 until December 1, 1929, a period of three hundred days, that drew $6.00 a day doing the same kind of work I was doing in Wilbarger County or in the vicinity where I was working, without losing a (Lay. (Italics ours.) I did not work three hundred days. The job I was on I worked four months and twelve days and then I was off from September until December, when I went to work for them. I went to the cotton patch from September until December. To some men those oil field jobs last constantly for a period of three hundred days a year. I could not recall the names of anybody that have been doing that same kind of work for five or six years and I do not know whether they get $5.00 or $6.00' a day.”
It does not appear from the record that the plaintiff objected to the introduction of this evidence because the witness was incompetent to testify by reason of lack of knowledge of similar conditions in his field. The statement as first made, together with the testimony introduced on the cross-interrogation, went to the jury for what it was worth, and should have gone to them, and, they having decided the question, we hold that there was a sufficient basis for their verdict.