Court Opinion

ID: 9830540
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:16:39.91539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:24.043150
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
We have carefully reviewed appellee’s motion for a rehearing and see no reason why we should change our conclusions in this case.
Appellee testified that he went to the gap made in his south fence at a time which was very shortly after the defendant’s employees made the gap.
He said that the cattle escaping through that gap would go into Chamberlain’s pasture, which joins him on the south. He said that Chamberlain told him he drove up certain livestock belonging to appellee, and ap-pellee described them as: “2 head of cattle, 2 mares, 2 mules and 1 jack.” He then testified positively that he never recovered any of these animals. But appellee did not sue for the loss of the jack and only claims that he lost 1 mare.
For the purpose of showing that some of his cattle went from his pasture through the said break in the fence and into Chamberlain’s pasture, appellee testified that he saw the animals’ tracks; that these were tracks of “mules, horses, colts, cattle and cows.”
But appellee did not sue for the loss of any colt, or colts.
Appellee’s testimony shows that he did not attempt to locate his stock in Chamberlain’s pasture, after he discovered the fence was down and he saw the tracks, and it further shows that he made no effort to mend the fence until the next day.
In the light of his testimony, no jury could possibly say that the stock that were lost were those that went through the gap before appellee went there, or that they were stock that went through the gap after appellee left the place and before he mended the fence the next day.
Furthermore, no jury could say, in the light of the evidence, that the stock that were lost were lost solely because defendant’s employees made a gap in the fence that leads from appellee’s pasture to Chamberlain’s.
The testimony showed that appellee’s stock had been getting out of his pasture at other points on his fence line, and it showed that, on the occasion complained about, Chamberlain, into whose pasture ap-pellee says his stock went, lost no stock.
Mr. Justice Leddy, speaking for the Commission of Appeals, in Austin, Com’r, v. Neiman et al., 14 S.W.2d 794, 796, said: “In determining whether there is any evidence to sustain a finding, we must confine ourselves ‘within the field of evidence to the utmost bounds of reason which rational men of common sense might know without passing beyond the line between the field of probability and the field of conjecture.’ 23 C.J. p. 53, § 1795; Hollenback v. Stone & Webster Eng. Corp., 46 Mont. 559, 129 P. 1058; Lehane v. Butte Elec. Co., 37 Mont. 564, 97 P. 1038; Mickuczauski v. Plelmholz Mitten Co., 148 Wis. 153, 134 N.W. 369.”
The motion is overruled.