Court Opinion

ID: 9830068
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:51:05.88211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:12.038255
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
[9-11] A careful reconsideration of this case upon appellee’s motion for a rehearing has failed to convince us that we erred in holding that the evidence adduced was sufficient to require the submission of the issues presented by the pleadings to the jury impaneled for its trial for determination. The case, in our .opinion, differs in important particulars from the case of Missouri Pac. Ry. Co. v. Porter, 73 Tex. 304, 11 S. W. 324, and is not ruled thereby, nor by either of the cases cited by counsel for the appellee. The well-settled rule that it may be established by circumstances that a person was killed by a railway train at a public crossing through the negligence of the railway company’s servants, and that the person killed was, at the time, in the exercise of care for his own safety, • is expressly recognized in the case mentioned. Such is simply the effect of our holding in the case at bar. That in such a ca§e the circumstances must be shown by direct evidence, and cannot be inferred from other circumstances, and that “it is not admissible to go into the domain of conjecture, and to pile one presumption upon another, is not and has not by this court been questioned.” The circumstances shown by the positive or direct testimony found in the record were sufficient, we think, to take this ease to the jury on all material issues made by the pleadings. In other words, we hold that the probative force of the evidence is not so weak that it only raises a mere surmise or suspicion of the existence of the *803facts sought to be established, but that the existence of such facts may be reasonably inferred from the circumstances shown. A presumption of fact is a probable inference which common sense, enlightened by human knowledge- and experience, draws from the connection, relation, and coincidence of facts and circumstances with each other. If the fact in evidence usually accompanies the fact in issue, it gives rise to a probable presumption of the existence of the fact to be proved, and presumption of fact must always be drawn by the jury. United States v. Searcey (D. C.) 26 Fed. 435; Kent v. People, 8 Colo. 563, 9 Pac. 852; Sears v. Vaughan, 230 Ill. 572, 82 N. E. 881. It cannot be said as a matter of law that -the existence of the facts essential to appellant’s right of recovery cannot reasonably be deduced from the facts and circumstances shown on the trial of this case. This being true, it was error to withdraw the case from the jury.
In our original opinion we stated, in effect, that a short time before the accident causing the death of E. E. Luten he left home carrying a gun, and appellee insists that such conclusion is not supported by any evidence. In carefully reviewing the testimony again, we fail to find any direct testimony to that effect; and if such conclusion is not a fair inference from the circumstances in evidence, then there is no evidence to support it. The absence of such evidence, however, is not of sufficient importance to require a change in the disposition we have made of the appeal.
[12] It is also contended that there is no evidence showing that th-e train which caused the death of the said Luten was going north. This is incorrect. The facts and circumstances in evidence make it very clear that it was. In addition to the facts pointed out in the original opinion it appears that the train that struck and killed the deceased carried his body to the town of Abbott. The witness T. E. Morgan testified that he lived at or near Abbott; that he knew Mr. Luten; that he passed the depot at Abbott the day Luten was killed; that he saw his body that day at Abbott; that the railroad company had it when he first saw it at the depot and that he assisted in unloading it. The witness PI. H. Humphries testified that he lived south of Abbott in the neighborhood of and pretty close to where Mr. Luten lived; and that appellee’s railroad track ran north and south at the point where the accident occurred is conclusively shown. The foregoing testimony, aside from other testimony in the record disclosing the facts and circumstances detailed in the original opinion, is amply sufficient to warrant the conclusion that the train in question was moving north.
We believe the proper disposition of the appeal has been made, and, so believing, the motion for a rehearing is overruled.