Court Opinion

ID: 9827855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:53:38.837025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:37.959719
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In our original opinion the main contentions of the telegraph company in this case were summarized as follows:
“The mental anguish alleged was not the proximate result of defendant’s negligence, and that the damages were too remote, contingent, uncertain, and speculative, and that there was no ground or element of recoverable or actionable damages alleged and proved.”
After much deliberation, and not without some hesitation, the questions so stated were resolved adversely to the plaintiff in error, and going, as they necessarily did, to the foundations of the ease, that conclusion —in the absence of a holding that there was other reversible error — led to the affirmance of the trial court’s judgment. But after a further consideration upon rehearing of all questions presented, much aided by the very ' able and comprehensive additional brief filed by plaintiff in error, the majority of the court have reached the conclusion that our former determination of this fundamental question was error, and that this basic contention of the telegraph company that the damages alleged were too remote, contingent, uncertain, and- speculative must be sustained.
In arriving at this conclusion, a re-examination of the adjudicated cases in Texas has convinced the majority of this court that our original opinion would extend the mental anguish doctrine in this state beyond what has heretofore been regarded as its legitimate coniines; that the Rich Case, 59 Tex. Civ. App. 395, 126 S. W. 687, quoted from in the original opinion, may be distinguished from the case at bar, and is therefore not strictly analogous with it, in that in that case there was an actual, reasonable ground of fear and apprehension of contracting said contagious disease directly and proxiniately resulting from defendant’s failure to deliver a telegram warning'Rich not to go to said place; while here it is thought that what defendant in error really suffered from was the illness and death of his wife in his enforced absence, and that therefore his were reflex injuries to the feelings from mental distress of another, or mere sympathetic mental anguish, which are not in any event recoverable; that there is lacking a proximate cause — the negligence of the defendant is not shown to have proximately resulted in an injury to the feelings of plaintiff himself of such a nature as the law recognizes — and that the facts of the instant case make it more nearly analogous to the case of Telegraph Co. v. Young, 61 Tex. Civ. App. 232, 130 S. W. 257.
Since this determination of the controlling questions presented necessarily involves the finding that defendant in error was not entitled to recover, it is deemed unnecessary to discuss other questions presented in the motion for rehearing, except the assignment that this court erred in holding that no reversible error was committed below in admitting, under the circumstances shown, the testimony relating to the state , of mind of defendant in error’s wife.
In support of the above-stated conclusions of the majority of the court, the following authorities are collated and cited: W. U. Tel. Co. v. Young, 61 Tex. Civ. App. 232, 130 S. W. 257; Tel. Co. v. Luck, 91 Tex. 178, 41 S. W. 469, 66 Am. St. Rep. 869; Tel. Co. v. Edmundson, 91 Tex. 206, 42 S. W. 549; Tel. Co. v. Linn, 87 Tex. 7, 26 S. W. 490, 47 Am. St. Rep. 58; Tel. Co. v. Motley, 87 Tex. 38, 27 S. W. 52; Tel. Co. v. Coffin, 88 Tex. 94, 30 S. W. 896; Tel. Co. v. Carter, 85 Tex. 580, 22 S. W. 961, 34 Am. St. Rep. 826; Tel. Co. v. Wilson, 97 Tex. 22, 75 S. W. 482; Tel. Co. v. Kuykendall, 99 Tex. 323, 89 S. W. 965; De Yoegler v. Tel. Co., 10 Tex. Civ. App. 229, 30 S. W. 1107; Ricketts v. Tel. Co., 10 Tex. Civ. *1032App. 226, 30 S. W. 1105; Ratliff v. Tel. Co., 183 S. W. 78; Tel, Co. v. Chamberlain, 169 S. W. 370; Tel. Co. v. Sherlin, 184 S. W. 310; Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Wilcoxson, 129 S. W. 868; Tel. Co. v. McNairy, 34 Tex. Civ. App. 389, 78 S. W. 969; Tel. Co. v. Steenbergen, 107 Ky. 469, 54 S. W. 829; Tel. Co. v. Vickery, 158 S. W. 794; Hancock v. Tel. Co., 137 N. C. 497, 49 S. E. 952, 69 L. R. A. 405; Tel. Co. v. Birchfield, 14 Tex. Civ. App. 664, 38 S. W. 635; Tel. Co. v. Reed, 37 Tex. Civ. App. 445, 84 S. W. 296; Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Thomas, 185 S. W. 396; Goodwin v. Tel. Co., 160 S. W. 107; Tel. Co. v. McFarlane, 161 S. W. 57; Joske v. Irvine, 91 Tex. 574, 44 S. W. 1059.
Prom the views of the majority of the court thus expressed and the consequent decision rendered, the writer, adhering as he does to the contrary position as stated in the original opinion, respectfully dissents. It is, for the reason stated in the former opinion, not thought by him that the principle applied to the developed facts of the Young Case, 61 Tex. Civ. App. 232, 130 S. W. 257 (and the line of cases cited supporting it), in which recovery was sought in behalf of both the husband and wife, rules the case at bar.
If it be true that, under the peculiar facts shown here, it would, under the precedents of our decisions, be an extension of the mental anguish doctrine in Texas to allow defendant in-error a recovery in his own right for the suffering he endured, it is respectfully suggested that the extension should be made, for the simple reason that it is fundamentally right in principle. Hence, without lengthening the statement of this dissent, under the conviction that the original opinion is right, it is here reiterated as the view of the writer.
But the court all agreed, upon the reconsideration of the question, that we erred in holding that no reversible error was committed by the trial court in admitting testimony to the effect that, prior to her death, defendant in error’s wife kept calling for him, and had been very much worried on being told that no response had been received from, etc. A further examination of the cases of Tel. Co. v. Lydon, 82 Tex. 364, 18 S. W. 701, and Tel. Co. v. Adams, 75 Tex. 535, 12 S. W. 857, 6 L. R. A. 844, 16 Am. St. Rep. 920, especially as construed in Tel. Co. v. Stiles, 89 Tex. 312, 34 S. W. 438, and Tel. Co. v. Waller, 96 Tex. 589, 74 S. W. 751, 97 Am. St. Rep. 936, has convinced us that they furnish no authority for our former holding, and that the testimony should have been excluded. Defendant in error could not in his own right recover for the mental suffering and anguish of his wife, but only for his own, and while the court so restricted his right of recovery, still the jury may have been unduly influenced by the prominence thus given the deathbed scene presented for their consideration. As the verdict was for a lump sum, it is not possible to say what part of it might have been awarded for an improper and nonrecoverable element of damage, to wit, the mental anguish of the wife. Por this reason alone the case would have to be reversed, and in the opinion of the writer it should be on that account remanded for a new trial; but in obedience to the majority opinion the motion for rehearing has been granted, and the cause will be here reversed and rendered for plaintiff in error.
Reversed and rendered.
GRAVES, J., dissenting in part.