Court Opinion

ID: 9830797
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:30:05.113349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:27.019234
License: Public Domain

Opinion on Motion for Rehearing.
In an earnest motion for rehearing appellant urges that, since it pleaded specific acts of dishonesty and disloyalty of appellee toward appellant" in bar of his suit, to which appellee pleaded neither waiver, condonation, acquiescence, or estoppel in reply, this- court was in error in overruling its assignment.
Obviously the term “dishonesty” under the peculiar facts of this case cannot be given its ordinary meaning. The issue was not whether appellee was a dishonest man as an abstract proposition and as ordinarily understood. If appellant directed the performance of such acts or legally ratified them, it could not thereafter allege and prove their existence in bar of plaintiff’s suit, even if dishonest as that word is commonly understood. Appellee denied generally in his pleadings these alleged acts of dishonesty and testified, without objection, in such way as clearly made an issue of whether they amounted to dishonesty towards appellant. The trial court was, therefore, not justified in submitting the naked question of whether he acted dishonestly toward his employer without any qualification or explanation. The jury would thus be turned loose without any guide to find any act of appellee dishonest, though same may have not amounted in law to such or even been pleaded. Ini addition to this it seems fairly clear, though we do not expressly so decide, that whether he acted dishonestly is a legal inference to be drawn by the court from proper findings of the jury upon the issuable facts pleaded.
It is clear that a trial court does not err in refusing an improper charge. Speer’s Special Issues §§ 253 and 263, and authorities there cited.
It is suggested, however, that the requested charge, though wrong, was sufficiént to call the trial court’s attention to his error of omission and place upon him the burden of giving a correct one. It is undoubtedly true that a requested charge, though erroneous, may under some circumstances be regarded as an implied request to submit a correct one which can be made the basis of a meritorious assignment of error. However, we know of no case holding that such a question can be raised for the first time in a motion for rehearing and require consideration without any assignment of error. There is a difference between an error assigned to the refusal of the court to give an incorrect charge and one which questions his failure to give a correct one. Olds Motor Works v. Churchill (Tex. Civ. App.) 175 S. W. 785; Gulf Production Co. v. Gibson (Tex. Civ. App.) 234 S. W. 906.
The appellant has presented no assignment of error here except to the failure of the court to give its requested charge. Under the last authorities, supra, we cannot consider the question suggested.
The above disposes also of the assignment relating to appellant’s requested charge attempting to present the issue of appellee’s disloyalty toward his employer.
The motion is overruled.