Court Opinion

ID: 9610486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:42:21.031676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:00.253166
License: Public Domain

*466JOHN CAYCE, Chief Justice,
concurring.
I join the majority’s opinion, but I concur only in the result reached by the majority on the issue of whether the trial court erred in failing to submit the negligence of Aldrich and Hamrick to the jury.
The jury found that Bedford was sixty percent responsible for the accident. This unchallenged finding is binding on appellants and bars their recovery as a matter of law. Tex. Crv. PRac. & Rbm.Code Ann. § 33.001 (Vernon 1997). Therefore, assuming without deciding that the trial court erred in failing to submit the negligence of Aldrich and Hamrick, I believe the error, if any, was harmless.1 See Boatland of Houston, Inc. v. Bailey, 609 S.W.2d 743, 750 (Tex.1980) (holding error in sübmission of jury question is harmless when other jury findings support judgment); Tex. & Pac. Ry. Co. v. Snider, 159 Tex. 380, 321 S.W.2d 280, 283 (1959) (holding error in submitting definition of contributory negligence harmless where judgment rested on different jury findings); San Antonio Press, Inc. v. Custom Bilt Machinery, 852 S.W.2d 64, 65 (Tex.App.-San Antonio 1993, no writ) (stating that when unchallenged no-damage finding supports judgment, error in liability finding is harmless).
For these reasons, I concur only in the result reached by the majority in overruling issue one. I join the remainder of the opinion.

. We may not speculate, as appellant urges us to do, whether the jury might have assigned less than fifty percent responsibility to Bed-ford if it had been allowed to consider Aldrich and Hamrick’s negligence. Instead, we must presume the jury followed the trial court’s instructions and apportioned sixty percent of the responsibility for the accident to Bedford based on the evidence. See Tesfa v. Stewart, 135 S.W.3d 272, 278 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2004, pet. denied).