Court Opinion

ID: 9668955
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:33:51.392182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:50:27.965386
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SMITH
concurring.
I concur in the result. There is no evidence that L. C. Clark discovered and realized prior to the accident in question that the plaintiff, White, occupied a position of peril.
I do not understand White to argue “that the jury is entitled to conclude that the injured party’s peril was discovered whenever it appears that the defendant should have appreciated the danger.” [Emphasis added.]
White’s basic position seems to be that the evidence on issue No. 2 brought his case within the rule announced in the case of Ford v. Panhandle & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 151 Tex. 538, 252 S.W. 2d 561. White does not contend that the case of Creech v. Thompson, 156 Tex. 561, 297 S.W. 2d 817 is controlling. Therefore, it seems to me that we should let the Creech case speak for itself. White’s evidence amounts to no evidence. He contends, however, that the Ford case, supra, is analogous to the facts in the present case. White has not misinterpreted the holding in the Ford case. His only difficulty is that his facts fail to bring him within the rule in Ford.
The Ford case supports White in his contention that it was not necessary for him to prove that Clark must have known that disaster was inevitable unless he averted it.
In the Ford case, this Court wrote at length on this question and, after an exhaustive analysis of applicable cases, this Court said:
“This philosophy as expressed in the Shetter and O’Donnell cases was examined and pointedly and specifically repudiated in 1907 by Chief Justice Gill of the Court of Civil Appeals in an opinion in the case of International & G. N. Ry. *480Co. v. Munn, 46 Tex. Civ. App. 276, 102 S.W. 442, 444. Chief Justice Gill characterized the language quoted from the Shetter case and approved in the O’Donnell case as ‘loose expressions in cases from courts of the highest authority’ and said that the cases actually intended to hold that for a duty of care to one on or approaching a railroad track to arise ‘it is not requisite that the engineer must know that disaster is inevitable unless he himself can avert it. It is enough if he knows that the person injured was in a place of danger from which he probably could not or would not extricate himself in time.’ Then with respect to the fact situation before the Court — that of a deaf man on a railroad track being hit by a train, which, by way of emphasis of what was said, was the identical fact situation as in the O’Donnell case — Chief Justice Gill wrote: ‘In a legal sense and in point of fact it is accurate to say that the peril of one in Munn’s position consisted of his ignorance, for there was no time up to within a few feet of the train when he might not have saved himself had the knowledge of its approach been borne in upon his senses.’ The Supreme Court refused a writ of error in in the Munn case.
“After the decision in the Munn case, and until it was reasserted in the language quoted from the Napier and Parks cases, the opinions of appellate courts in Texas reflected a singular unanimity in rejection of the ‘certain injury’ philosophy in the doctrine of discovered peril. * * * ”
Safeway and White are in agreement as to the law, but in disagreement as to the probative force of the facts. We agree with Safeway and sustain its no evidence point.
White, incidentally, cites Creech v. Thompson and Morreale v. Cohen, but these cases are only cited for the proposition that Clark, being an interested witness, certain “testimony on his part was simply a conclusion.”
In the Ford case, this Court set out the elements of discovered peril and said:
“The quantum of proof required of the plaintiff on these elements of discovered peril in order to entitle him to have them submitted to the jury was such facts and circumstances as taken together with all reasonable inferences therefrom constituted some evidence of probative force of their exist*481ence.” Citing White v. White, 141 Tex. 328, 172 S.W. 2d 295; Stevens v. Karr, 119 Tex. 479, 33 S.W. 2d 725.
While recognizing the rule that in determining whether the plaintiff has discharged this burden, the evidence in the record must be considered in its most favorable light to the plaintiff, disregarding all evidence and the inferences therefrom favorable to the defendant, I maintain that there is no evidence, as required, showing that White’s evidence measures up to the quantum of proof essential to a recovery.
Obviously, what the writer in the Southwest Law Journal said relative to the Creech case is immaterial. A conclusion as to what was held in that case is unnecessary to a decision in this case.
For the reasons stated, I agree that the judgments of both the trial court and the Court of Civil Appeals must be reversed and judgment here rendered that the plaintiff and intervenor take nothing.