Court Opinion

ID: 9830760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:27:20.479924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:26.340805
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
By-a carefully prepared and persuasive motion for rehearing, appellee attacks that part of our original opinion reversing the judgment because the trial court erred, in giving special issue No. 1Ó and in refusing to give appellant’s reguested special issue No. 8.
The court’s issue No. 10 inquired of the jury what sum, if paid now, would be fair compensation for the pecuniary loss sustained by plaintiff, but failed to instruct the jury that, in arriving at such sum, they should not take into consideration either grief, sorrow, mental anguish, loss of society, companionship, etc.
It is first insisted in the motion that we are in error because special issue No. 10 was not affirmatively erroneous. We think the failure of the court to exclude these elements in estimating the damages has been held by the Supreme Court to be affirmative and positive error in the cases cited in the original opinion and in Houston & T. C. Ry. Co. v. Gant (Tex. Civ. App.) 175 S. W. 745; and Galveston, H. & S. A. Ry. Co. v. Worthy, 87 Tex. 459, 29 S. W. 376. It is true that the appellant did not object to special issue No. 10 because it failed to exclude the above-mentioned elements upon which damages might have been assessed. The only objection to the issue was that it did not instruct the jury to deduct from earnings of the deceased Houze such expenses as might have been incurred in earning the same. It is questionable whether expenses should be deducted except where damages are sought by a parent for the death of a minor child. However, we do not decide that question, and even if it be held that the objection was insufficient, nevertheless, by specially requested issue No. 8, appellant called the court’s attention to the fact that special issue No. 10 was defective in failing to instruct the jury that no recovery could be had by plaintiff for “mental grief or agony.” It may be admitted that requested special issue No. 8 was insufficient, in that it did not ask the court to also exclude loss of society, companionship, and other proper elements, but it was correct as far as it went, and was therefore sufficient to call the court’s attention to the error in omitting the elements of mental grief and agony, and even though defective in other particulars, it was sufficient to call the court’s attention to the elements pointed out and to have required the court to correct special issue No. 10 in the particulars specified. Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Coleman (Tex. Civ. App.) 284 S. W. 279; Graves v. Haynes (Tex. Com. App.) *871231 S. W. 383; Galveston, H. & S. A. Ry. Co. v. Worthy, supra.
As further ground urged in the motion, the appellee insists that because appellant made no objection to the verdict of the jury as being excessive, the failure of the court to exclude the elements of mental anguish, sorrow, etc., is not available to appellant. This contention was passed upon in the Gant Case, supra, in which the identical question was disposed of by Judge Key, who said such an error in an instruction could not be regarded as harmless, though defendant made no complaint that the verdict was excessive.
None of the cases cited by appellee are in point upon the matters urged in the motion.
Appellee does not question the correctness of our holding upon the other errors pointed out in the original opinion, and, while the question raised is not entirely free from doubt, we overrule the motion.