Court Opinion

ID: 9828366
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:19:44.021832+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:47.608444
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Since filing our original opinion appellant has filed its motion for rehearing, and therein asks that we specifically pass upon its assignments 37 and 50. It is requested: First, that it be shown in our opinion that appellant did not acquiesce in the trial court’s qualification of the evidence complained of in the thirty-sixth assignment of error (such qualification being fully set out in the original opinion under a discussion of the thirty-sixth assignment). It is urged that it is not shown in the original opinion that appellant objected to such qualification.
By the thirty-seventh assignment it is shown that appellant did urge that the court erred ini instructing the jury, upon the evidence complained of by the thirty-sixth assignment, as follows:
“In this connection the courts instructs you that this evidence just admitted cannot be considered by you in any way as being evidence of any past facts that it may seem to recite to you; that is, when it recites certain things as having transpired, that is not evidence of those facts at all. It is only admitted and can only *555be considered by you upon this question alone: as to the attitude and position which was assumed and taken by the plaintiff at the time that intervention was filed in reference to this matter, and the claims that were then made as to the present conditions at that time, and future claims that were made and asserted. In that connection also that suit has nothing to do with this case, and you gentlemen do not know how it came out, and have no concern as to how it came out.”
The contention of appellant is that such instruction was upon the weight of' the evidence and invaded the province of the jury as to what force and effect should be given to the testimony, and advised them that the jury might consider it for purposes as to which it was not competent proof.
We held in our original opinion that the plea of intervention, introduced as evidence, as qualified by the court, was admissible for the purposes for which it was admitted, and we are unable to see how the instruction of the court to the jury not to consider the allegations in the plea of intervention introduced, as a statement of any fact, was a charge upon the weight of the evidence, or that it could have injured the rights of appellant. We therefore overrule the thirty-seventh assignment.
By the fiftieth assignment it is urged that the findings of the jury as to the amount of the profits which appellee would have made from the timber contracted for, had it been delivered was unsupported by the evidence, and contrary to the evidence.
The contention of appellant is that the testimony of the witness C. J. Robertson, the only witness who testified as to profits, shows that all the costs incident to the manufacturing of the ash timber into lumber was $17.40 per 1,000 feet, and that the same testimony shows that the value of the manufactured ash lumber was $26 per 1,000 feet, and therefore the profits was the sum of $8.60 per 1,000 feet instead of $9.25, as found by the jury; that it is shown .by the testimony of the same witness that all the cost incident to the manufacturing of the cottonwood timber into lumber was $12.90 per 1,000 feet, and that the difference in the cost of manufacture and of the value of the cottonwood lumber was $4 per 1,000 feet instead of $4.65, as found by the jury. We think counsel for appellant in preparing his brief has misconstrued the testimony of the witness Robertson, as.it appears on pages 61 and 62 of the statement of facts. It is shown that Robert'son testified that the costs incident to manufacturing the ash and getting it to the Galveston market was $17.40 per 1,000 feet, and that the costs incident to manufacturing the cottonwood and getting it to Galveston market was $12.15 per 1,000 feet, while it is shown by the testimony of the same witness that the market value of the ash lumber at Galveston was from $7 to $65 per 1,000 feet, according to quality, but that the average value was from $26 to $30 per 1,000 feet, andnot $26, as stated by counsel- The same witness also testified that the market value of the cottonwood lumber at Galveston was from $16, $17, to $19 per 1,000 feet, and not $16 to $17, as stated by counsel in his brief. We think the findings of the jury as to the value of profits, etc., is supported by the evidence; hence we overrule the fiftieth assignment. Appellant has also requested in its motion that we include in our opinion a comprehensive statement of the testimony of appellant’s witness I-I. O. Compton. We fail to see that such statement could in any manner benefit appellant. The only effect such testimony has is to show a conflict in the evidence, and as we think the testimony of Bobertson, which is controverted by the testimony of Compton, was sufficient to warrant the jury’s findings, we can see no reason for making a statement of Compton’s testimony as requested. We see no reason for receding from the holding expressed in the original opinion; therefore the motion is overruled.
Overruled.