Court Opinion

ID: 9769729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:00:13.092371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:07.252916
License: Public Domain

ON APPELLEES’ MOTION FOR REHEARING
RICKOFF, Justice.
Appellees’ motion for rehearing is granted in part. This opinion supplements our opin*723ion of January 15, 1997. Our judgment of January 15, 1997 is withdrawn, and our judgment of this date is substituted therefor. We grant the motion for rehearing in part to provide for the reversal and remand of Ruth Mahl’s defamation claim.
Our opinion of January 15,1997 (the “Prior Opinion”) is incorporated herein by reference and is hereby supplemented as follows.
In our Prior Opinion, we refer to cross point number two as Helping Hands’ cross point number two, and our judgment reverses the judgment of the trial court as to the disparagement claim, remanding it for new trial. Appellees note in their motion for rehearing that both appellee Helping Hands and appellee Ruth Mahl complained in the cross point of the trial court’s ruling permitting Barbara Aldave, Dean of St. Mary’s University School of Law, to testify regarding whether certain language was disparaging or defamatory because it was not a proper subject for expert testimony. We agree with appellees that both Helping Hands and Ruth Mahl presented the cross point and that they are both entitled to have their disparagement/defamation claims reversed and remanded for new trial. Therefore, we hereby withdraw our judgment of January 15, 1997 and substitute a new judgment reversing and remanding both Helping Hands’ disparagement claim and Ruth Mahl’s defamation claim because the trial court erred in allowing Dean Aldave to testify regarding a legal conclusion after it ruled that she would only be permitted to testify as a fact witness.