Court Opinion

ID: 9827263
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:20:37.146166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:27.918923
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
. Having given in the charge definitions of “ordinary care” and “negligence,” both of which definitions have to do with common-law negligence — ordinary negligence, or simple negligence — and the Guest Statute (Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St. art. 6701b) having done away with the. right of a guest to recover for such negligence, but having restricted the complaining party to a recovery occasioned by gross negligence, it occurs to us that there is manifest error in the charge wherein the trial court, after attempting to define “heedless and reckless disregard of the rights of others,” added thereto: “It is not necessary that such act be done with a wilful purpose of inflicting injury in order to constitute ‘heedlessness or reckless disregard of the-rights of others’, but must be in connection with the doing of such act or omission to act under circumstances indicating the natural or probable result and the consequences thereof.”
This paragraph, or portion, of the court’s charge, when taken in connection with the definitions of “ordinary care,” “negligence,” and “proximate cause,” tended to-lead the jury to believe that the defendant below was guilty of a “heedless and reckless disregard of the rights of others,” if his act, or his omission to act, under the circumstances surrounding the parties, indicated that he knew the natural or probable result and the consequences to follow.
Appellee contends that the charge Is simple, readily understood, and correctly defines the provisions of the Guest Statute.
We do not believe it is capable of such simple construction, or that it is readily understood as correctly defining the statute 'under which the suit is brought.
We believe that it advises the jury that, if the defendant below acted, or omitted to act, under such circumstances indicating that he knew, or by the exercise of ordinary care should have known, the natural and probable result of his act, or omission, and the consequences thereof, he would be guilty of gross negligence.
We believe that the paragraph or portion of the charge under observation destroys the effect of the paragraph, or portion, that precedes it, in so far as the-duty to expressly exclude “ordinary care” from consideration by the jury is concerned. Furthermore, if it does not absolutely give such effect to the charge, it is assuredly so misleading and confusing that the jury was warranted in finding, thereunder that the failure to exercise ordinary care by the defendant below, and! his negligence because of such failure constituted a “heedless and reckless disregard! of the rights of others.”
The motion for rehearing is overruled..