Court Opinion

ID: 9653424
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:46:32.948189+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:59.092771
License: Public Domain

MASSEY, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
The following was the original opinion of the Court on January 31, 1969. Finding myself unable to agree with the conclusion of my brethren as indicated by what is now the official opinion, and unable to agree with judgment of remand for a trial on the merits, such is filed as my dissent.
The question on appeal is the propriety of summary judgment granted by the trial court upon motion of a defendant. T.R. C.P. 166-A, “Summary Judgment”.
The question is to be resolved by the test of whether the defendant has successfully foreclosed existence of a fact issue to be tried upon the matter of agency of him who is claimed to have been defendant’s servant at the time of the occurrence of negligent tort causing plaintiff’s injuries. If defendant is liable to *425plaintiff it is because of application of the doctrine of respondeat superior.
The point of the collision between plaintiff, a pedestrian, and the truck owned and operated by the tort feasor was at what we will call point “A”, on a public highway immediately outside an airport. The tort feasor was a regular employee of the defendant. Under evidence in the record, by affidavits and depositions, it was either established or made factual issues that all employees of the defendant congregated within the premises of the airport at what we will call point “B”. Upon starting a day’s work they, and each of them, would depart therefrom and go to whatever location upon the airport runways where repair or maintenance work was being conducted under the defendant’s subcontract. Either raised as fact issues or indisputably established were that:
1. There were occasions at antecedent times when defendant’s employee would use a truck and run errands, etc., for his employer ;
2. On day of plaintiff’s accident the defendant’s employee had reported for work, and had begun work for defendant in connection with objectives contracted to be accomplished upon the airport runways;
3. In connection with such work he had run his personally owned truck between point “B” and the locale of work in progress on the runways on at least one occasion before the time he took the trip during the course of which his truck struck the plaintiff; and
4. That he left the locale of defendant’s runway work and drove his truck therefrom to point “B”, almost immediately thereafter departing thence to drive out of the airport premises onto the public highway — where in the making of his turn onto such highway he struck plaintiff at point “A”.
Defendant’s employee testified that he was leaving the premises for the purpose of getting cigarettes for himself, upon his own volition and only to serve his own purposes; that the movement of his truck between point “B” and point “A” immediately prior to and at time of the collision was solely for the prescribed purpose.
Such evidence is not contradicted in any respect, nor is a fact issue created in respect thereto unless it might be said that because of the raising of the factual issues we have listed as 1 to 4, inclusive, as to actions on the part of the employee within the scope and course of his employment, it would follow that there was a fact issue upon the matter of his agency during his movement from point “B” to point “A” where his truck struck the plaintiff.
On oral presentation in this court the attorney for the plaintiff conceded that there would have been a propriety of summary judgment had all witnesses who testified to the effect that the “day’s work” of the tort feasor had never begun prior to time of the accident, and that he had never gone out to the runways, contrarily testified that he had begun his “day’s work” and had been out on the runways and returned to point “B”, but had left that point on a personal trip for cigarettes. What this means is that counsel is of the opinion that because the trial court could have found the contrary of the facts of which there was testimony before the time the tort feasor embarked on the final trip from point “B” to the point of the accident (because there was evidence or inferences to be made contradictory thereof) it could have gone a step further and found that the tort feasor’s trip from point “A” to the point of the accident was one taken in the furtherance of the employer’s business despite the fact that there was no contradictory evidence thereof.
We must disagree with counsel for plaintiff and hold that though the circumstances were such that the trial court was at liberty to “disbelieve” the evidence that the tort feasor was not embarked upon a *426trip for his employer it was powerless to find that the tort feasor was embarked upon a trip for him. This was the situation before the trial; one wherein plaintiff revealed himself powerless to show any available evidence that the tort feasor was, at the material time, engaged in a service for the defendant.
The controlling principles of law are to be found embodied in the cases of Hudiburgh v. Pavlic, 274 S.W.2d 94 (Beaumont, Tex.Civ.App., 1954, writ ref., n. r. e.), and Mitchell v. Ellis, 374 S.W.2d 333 (Fort Worth, Tex.Civ.App., 1963, error refused). Under such the plaintiff in such a case, in the discharge of his burden of proof, is obliged to overcome any suggestion by the evidence of his opponent that the act in question was done while the servant was on a purely personal mission by affirmative evidence to the effect that the act was done while the servant was acting as an agent for his master; and that the plaintiff’s burden of proof in such regard is not discharged where the jury or other finder of fact is at liberty merely to disbelieve the defendant’s testimony of absence of the agency relationship, and cannot find presence of such relationship if there is an absence of countering affirmative evidence. In the cited cases there had been a trial on the merits.
Here we have a case where the proceedings in the trial court was a hearing on defendant’s motion for summary judgment advanced upon affidavits and depositions under which the defendant assumed the negative burden of showing as a matter of law that the plaintiff had no cause of action against him. 4 McDonald’s Texas Civil Practice, Cumulative Supplement, “Judgments”, Sec. 17.26.1, “(New) — B. When Summary Judgment Proper”. Thereby was presented evidence, albeit by interested persons, that defendant’s servant was on a purely personal mission at time of the accident. Such evidence was not contradicted by any evidence for the plaintiff.
Under the circumstances presented I see no reason why the same law which would control disposition of the case had it been tried on the merits should not control a case on motion for summary judgment. The trial court did deem the instant case thereby controlled and accordingly rendered judgment upon motion of the defendant.