Court Opinion

ID: 9828284
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:16:08.003272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:46.945496
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Defendant in error suggests that our decision in.this case is “quite novel.” We merely invoked a principle as old as jurisprudence, that a party to litigation is entitled to a fair trial. In answerng question No. 6 — the issue submitting the amount of damages suffered by plaintiff in error as a proximate result of the collision — the jury arbitrarily rejected all the evidence on that'issue and. found, “Nothing”; under the undisputed evidence the jury was compelled to find a substantial sum in answer to this question. Defendant in error would support this finding by the proposition that, having found plaintiff in error guilty of contributory negligence, the jury knew he could not be awarded any amount and so found by its verdict. That is not a reasonable construction of the facts of this record and is contrary to the law governing special issue submissions. On this proposition, speaking for the Supreme Court, in Monkey Grip Rubber Company v. Walton, 122 Tex. 185, 53 S.W.(2d) 770, 772, the Commission of Appeals said: “When a case is submitted on special issues, it is the duty of the jury to answer each special issue as the facts justify without regard to the effect of such finding upon the judgment to be thereafter rendered in the cause.” It necessarily follows that some improper influence induced the jury to answer 'this question against all the evidence and contrary to the law. . ...
Only by giving due effect to the principle that the jury is the judge of the credibility of the witnesses and the weight to be given their testimony, and that it had the legal right to believe the witnesses offered by defendant in error and to reject the tes* timony of the witnesses offered by plaintiff in error, could this court affirm the findings on the issue of contributory negligence. While the jury has the right to weigh and reject testimony, it does not.have the right, acting arbitrarily, to reject any testimony, but it must weigh all testimony sent to it by the court and' judge the credibility of the witnesses. Since it affirmatively appears that the jury arbitrarily rejected all evidence in support of issue No. 6 because, manifestly, of some prejudice against plaintiff in error, it is reasonable to conclude that the same improper influence entered into the findings on contributory negligence; that is, having arbitrarily rejected certain testimony going to the very heart of plain*586tiff in error’s cause of action, the jury arbitrarily rejected all testimony offeree} .by him on the trial.
On the facts of this case we are not in conflict, as defendant in error insists, with Osterloh v. San Antonio Public Service Company (Tex.Civ.App.) 77 S.W.(2d) 290, and Harrison v. Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. (Tex.Civ.App.) 89 S.W.(2d) 455. To sanction this verdict would write into our jurisprudence the principle that the jury can ignore the special issues submitted by the court and return a general verdict in violation of the court’s charge; of course, the jury does not have that power.
The motion for rehearing is in all things overruled.