Court Opinion

ID: 9729633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:45:18.209743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.301976
License: Public Domain

JACK CARTER, Justice,
concurring.
I concur with the result reached by the majority opinion, but write additionally to emphasize what I believe to be an important case not discussed in that opinion.
In Jones v. Ray, 886 S.W.2d 817 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 1994, orig. proceeding), the plaintiff alleged that a series of events by different medical personnel in different counties and at different times combined to produce the quadraplegia of a minor. At least one of the acts of negligence involved dropping the patient on the floor. The trial court severed the actions of some of the tortfeasors. In granting the mandamus, the court of appeals found that an abuse of discretion occurred. The following quote is lengthy, but explains the important principles better than I can:
The severed causes must also not be so intertwined as to involve the same identical facts and issues. In his fourth amended petition, relator alleged a continuous course of treatment constituting one continuous transaction, jointly producing an indivisible injury. Accordingly, the damages, if any, suffered by Jones from the acts relator alleges in the severed claims, necessarily relate to and are intertwined with the damages he suffered from the alleged acts of the Harris County defendants. At a single trial of all claims, the finder of fact will be asked, for each entity concerning which there is evidence of some responsibility for Jones’s injuries, to assign a *525percentage of that responsibility; the percentage the finder of fact assigns to each such entity will necessarily affect, and be affected by, the percentage of responsibility it assigns to each of the other such entities. If the severance order were allowed to stand, and the case were to proceed as two separate suits, then that relationship would hold true only in the abstract, and not in practice. The severance of the claims into two separate suits would not, of itself, preclude each set of defendants from presenting evidence that the defendants on trial in the other suit were responsible for Jones’s injuries. In each of those suits, the facts and issues relating to each particular entity’s liability for Jones’s injuries would be the same. Additionally, the respective triers of fact could each find that Jones had been injured and that the parties over whom their respective courts had no jurisdiction were collectively 100 percent responsible for his injuries, with the nonsensical result that Jones would recover nothing, despite those findings. On the other hand, the respective triers of fact could, instead, each decide that the parties over whom their respective courts did have jurisdiction were collectively 100 percent responsible for Jones’s injuries, leading to the equally nonsensical result that there would be, at least temporarily, two different judgments for full compensation for the same injuries to Jones.
Id. at 821-22.
The possibility of inconsistent verdicts is likewise present in this case. In a severed case in Harrison County, it is conceivable that the jury would place the entire percentage of responsibility on Dr. Edward Liu, for the nonconnected humerus bone, as Dr. Liu’s conduct would be an issue as a responsible third party, even though the plaintiff could not recover for Dr. Liu’s conduct. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 38.003(a)(4) (Vernon 2008). This finding could not be used in a later proceeding to impose liability on Dr. Liu. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 33.004(i)(2) (Vernon 2008). Then, if the case against Dr. Liu was tried in Gregg County, it is possible that a jury could find that the driver’s negligence was the entire cause of the injury to the humerus bone, thereby resulting in two completely inconsistent verdicts. The plaintiff would have findings of 100% responsibility of each of the defendants, but have no recovery. Theoretically, the converse could occur, resulting at least temporarily in a double recovery. To avoid the possibility of such inconsistent results, the trial court properly exercised its discretion by denying the severance.