Court Opinion

ID: 9769867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:05:32.694078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:08.845468
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING
On rehearing Southern Pacific urges us to reconsider our holding on the submission of the negligence issue in light of Scott v. Atcheson Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 21 Tex. Sup.Ct.J. 126 (Jan. 4, 1978), reh. den. per curiam, 21 Tex.Sup.Ct.J. 419 (June 7,1978). In that case the supreme court held that the submission of a broadly worded ultimate fact issue which fails to limit the jury’s consideration to those acts or omissions raised by both the pleadings and the evidence, where one or more pleaded acts or omissions are unsupported by evidence, is error. The court also held that a simple objection to the special issue was sufficient to preserve the error.
Southern Pacific is correct in asserting that such an error was made. The plaintiffs pled a number of specific negligent acts and omissions by Southern Pacific concerning which no evidence was introduced. Southern Pacific made an adequate objection.
We hold, however, that this error was harmless since the record before us does not reflect whether the pleadings were *810ever before the jury. At the time this case was tried a party had, during opening arguments, the option to either read his pleading or to state the nature of his claim or defense, but not to do both. Tex.R.Civ.P. 265(a) (1977).1 The record does not disclose how the plaintiffs exercised this option. It seems clear that the policy behind requiring evidentiary support for the pleadings is to prevent the jury from answering a question based solely on an idea injected into the trial by assertion and without proof. Where there is no showing that the assertion which might have colored the jury’s thinking was made, the appellate court cannot assume that it was made, and a matter of which the jury was ignorant assuredly cannot have affected its verdict. Tex.R. Civ.P. 434.
Moreover, we note that the trial court repeatedly instructed and admonished the jury to decide the case strictly on the basis of the evidence presented. We will not indulge the presumption that the jurors ignored such instruction and admonition.
Appellee Southern Pacific Transportation Company’s motion for rehearing is overruled.

. The current version of rule 265(a) no longer provides for this option; a party must briefly state the nature of his claim or defense plus what he expects to prove and the relief he seeks. Therefore the problem of matters pled but not proven may be largely mooted since it is difficult to conceive of a suit in which the jurors would be aware of what has been pled and therefore possibly influenced by it.