Court Opinion

ID: 9765719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:15:49.735593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:14.535184
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Garwood,
joined by Justices Smedley and Griffin, dissenting.
This case is a close one, and there are, of course advantages in sticking exactly to formulas of instruction that have the express blessing of precedent. But I cannot agree to make these plaintiffs go through another trial upon the doubtful assumption that the particular charge here involved is condemned by authority or, if sustained, will open the door to unduly speculative damages for future pain.
Absent compelling authority to the contrary, I approach the problém' in the spirit expressed in the following passage from Dean Charles T.' McCormick’s work on Damages:
“Attempts by appellate courts to require that instructions about damages for pain and suffering conform to a standard of exactness appropriate only to a mathematical theorem are sometimes encountered. For example, the phraseology of instructions authorizing damages for future pain and suffering seems to assume importance in the minds of some appellate courts. Consequently, there is much discussion as to whether particular instructions properly limit damages to compensation for suffering reasonably certain to be sustained or erroneously permit recovery for suffering which is merely ‘possible’. Surely too great exactitude about this subordinate feature of the instructions on damages should not be required. The chief reliance for reaching reasonable results in attempting to value suffering in terms of money must be the restraint and common sense of the jury *231and not the detailed verbal accuracy of the instructions.” McCormick on Damages, sec. 88, p. 318.
None of the cases cited in the majority opinion condemn a charge like that here in question, except one, or perhaps two, from Courts of Civil Appeals, which are not binding upon us. Gulf, C. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Harriett, 80 Texas 73, 15 S. W. 556, which appears to be our basic statement on the general subject, was directed against the defendant’s contention that the charge should expressly restrict damages for future consequences of negligence to those “reasonably certain” to occur. The court rejected the contention on the ground in effect, that it required the jury to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt rather than by a mere preponderance of the evidence and stated the correct rule to be that of “reasonable probability”. If thus the degree of proof is the real point at issue, the two instructions here in question met the test, since each of them contained the phrase “that you may believe from a preponderance of the evidence”, while no doubt a similar admonition was also given with respect to the charge as a whole. Now it may well be that if the instructions had said “that you may believe from a preponderance of the evidence that she (he) might possibly undergo in the future”, such an emphasis on mere possibility would give the jury a wrong criterion, but there is a clear difference between expressions such as “might possibly undergo” and the words “may have to undergo”, used in the instant case. The word “may” is not necessarily speculative and is often used colloquially as synonymous with “will”, while “have to” is more often used in the sense of an inevitable or unavoidable occurrence than it is as a reference to a mere future event. Thus I have little doubt that any juror, except one with a rather academic mind, would interpret the instructions simply as: “that you may believe from a preponderance of the evidence that he (she) will undergo in the future”. Certainly from the standpoint of the defendant, there is nothing objectionable in such an instruction, even though it does not contain the familiar expression “reasonable probability”. In fact, as suggested by the Harriett case abovementioned, and without meaning to argue that we abandon “reasonable probability” as the most desirable formula to strike a balance between plaintiff and defendant, it-seems to me that such an expression is ordinarily the same thing as telling the jury to be guided bjr a preponderance of the evidence. Since the latter admonition was given the jury in no uncertain terms, and the phrase “may have to undergo” is not enough to suggest that a bare possibility is all that a preponderance of the evidence need disclose, I think the instructions given were substantially correct. This conclusion has support in Galveston, H. *232& S. A. Ry. Co. v. Smith, Texas Civ. App., 93 S. W. 184, affirmed 100 Texas 267, 98 S. W. 240. One might add that the trial judge also put into each instruction the requirement that any future pain for which damages might be allowed would have to be “a direct and proximate result of the explosion in question”. How he defined these technical words does not appear in the record, but presumably he did define them and in the usual terms of natural sequence and foreseeability. This is also a valid, if only cumulative, reason to believe that the jury in this case did not likely believe it was free to award damages for pain that it considered- unlikely, though possible, of occurrence.
I think the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals should be reversed, and that of the trial court affirmed.
Opinion delivered May 10, 1950.
■ Rehearing overruled June 21, 1950.