Court Opinion

ID: 9832548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:59:33.282541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:47.872932
License: Public Domain

On. Appellant’s Motion for Writ of Cer-tiorari and Rehearing.
[11-13] Appellant insists it did object to the instruction as to an estoppel against it to set up defects in the work done by appellees before same was read by the court' to the jury, and, as evidence of the fact, attaches to its motion a certificate of the court stenographer to the effect that his notes taken during the trial showed appellant to have objected to the instruction. It was not a part of the duty of the stenographer to make a record of objections interposed to the charge (Vernon’s Sayles’ Statutes, arts. 1923, 1924;, and his notes of same, even if in the record sent to this court, could not be considered here. Where objections to a charge are made orally, as, it appears from the motion, appellant’s were, the action of the court with reference thereto complained of should be presented on appeal by a bill of exceptions as required by the rules. Rule 55 (142 S. W. xxi) for district and county courts. But, even if it appeared that a bill of exceptions presenting the ruling complained of had been filed in the court below as required by law, and that same had been omitted from the record sent to this court, appellant would not now, under the rules, be entitled to the writ of certiorari to perfect the record prayed for. Rules 11 (142 S. W. xi) and 22 for Courts of Civil Appeals. A part of rule 22 (142 S. W. xii) is as follows:
“All parties will be expected, before submission, to see that the transcript of the record is properly prepared, and the mere failure to observe omissions or inaccuracies therein will not be admitted, after submission, as a reason for correcting the record or obtaining a rehearing.”
[14,15] It does not appear from the bill of exceptions in the record, to which we must look, that the court refused to “hear,” quoting from the motion, “evidence upon paragraph 13 of the defendant’s answer, in substance, an allegation of $3,000 damage to cotton seed which he stored in the seedhouse and which were damaged on account of the unskillful manner in which plaintiff put the roof on said seedhouse.” As stated in the opinion, it appears from the bill of exceptions that what appellant offered to do was “to prove by John William Taylor that defendant had been damaged in the sum of $3,-000 on account of cotton seed becoming wet and heated and destroyed as the immediate result of unskillful and defective work of plaintiffs in putting the roof on the seedhouse of defendant.” We cannot assume that, because the court refused to permit appellant to prove the damages it claimed it had suffered by the opinion of Taylor, he would have excluded competent testimony, had it been offered, to prove facts from which the jury might have found appellant to have been damaged as alleged. The mere opinion of Taylor as to damages suffered by appellant, had Taylor been permitted to state his opinion, could not have been treated as sufficient basis for a finding in favor of appellant on that issue. Henry v. Phillips, 151 S. W. 537.
The motions are overruled.