Court Opinion

ID: 9767269
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:14:45.109779+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:29.937395
License: Public Domain

John A. Fogleman, Justice. I concur in the result, but there are two particulars in which I do not entirely agree with the majority opinion. Although I agree that the probate court order authorizing appellant to bring this action should not have been admitted into evidence, I think it would have been admissible if appellees had questioned his capacity to to sue as administrator. "Without probate court action appellant would not have been entitled to possession of the real estate in any event. When the circuit judge sustained the objection to the introduction of the order, he stated that no such issue had been raised. The record sustains him. I have serious reservations about the right of a dispossessed tenant to recover for his equity in farming equipment repossessed. It strains credulity to believe that an equity as great as that claimed by Lacy would be totally lost. I think it might well be that this element of damages was too remote and speculative to warrant consideration as a direct and natural consequence of the eviction. Yet, the abstract reveals no objection to the testimony offered in this regard. No objection is shown to have been made to any instruction given by the court. It does not appear that appellant offered any instruction to the jury to limit its consideration of the testimony as to damages, or any suggested modification or limitation of the instruction given on the measure of the tenant’s damages. It must be assumed that the jury did consider this testimony. The impropriety of considering this element of damages is not argued here. Appellant’s argument is directed toward the excessiveness of the verdict. Appellant’s only argument here with regard to this ¡evidence is that Lacy’s testimony was self-contradicting, unworthy of belief, unsupported, indefinite, confused, and vague. These objections, urged here for the first time, were actually resolved by the jury verdict. Por these reasons, it cannot be said that the jury erroneously included loss of equity in farming equipment.