Court Opinion

ID: 9834527
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:39:56.623241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:17:32.233679
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
Formal motions for rehearing were filed by both appellant and appellee, and these motions overruled at our last sitting. Since entering these orders, both parties have filed written arguments in support of their respective motions. These arguments we have carefully considered, although reaching the court after the motions were overruled.
The points presented in appellant’s argument have been fully covered in our original opinion.
Appellee has filed a very able and elaborate argument, which questions our holding to the effect that, when no request for submission bf an issue is made, that issue is treated as abandoned and goes out of the case. It is •conceded that our decision is supported by the several cases cited in our original opinion. However, it is contended that those decisions are at variance with the language of the statutes under construction, and in conflict with the case of Moore v. Pierson, 100 Tex. 113, 94 S. W. 1132. In this connection our attention is again called to the opinion’ in McKenzie v. Withers, 109 Tex. 255, 206 S. W. 503, to the •effect that opinions of the Commission, where not adopted by the Supreme Court, are not authority.
There are expressions in the Moore Case and in a number of other opinions, both by the Supreme Court and the Courts of Civil Appeals, which, taken generally and in the .abstract, may be construed as contrary to our holding in this case and those in the cases •cited in support of it; but an examination of the question before the court in the Moore •Case, and in each of the cases whose general language is apparently to the contrary, will ■disclose the fact that the question presented here and in. the cases cited in our original opinion was not then before the court. The exact question at bar appears first to have been authoritatively passed upon in an able opinion by Chief Justice Fly in Service Co. v. Tracy (Tex. Civ. App.) 221 S. W. 638, from which we quote:
“If a plaintiff can allege separate acts of negligence, acquiesce in the submission of only one of them to a jury, and then sustain the verdict on a ground of negligence upon which the jury did not pass, but which it is presumed was found by the judge, jury trial would become a farce, and the ultimate decision on facts as to other grounds of negligence would rest with the judge. Article 1985 [present article 2190] of the Revised Statutes is not elastic enough to stretch to that extent. It simply means that, where a jury has passed on certain issues as to a certain case submitted to them, if there be evidence as to other necessary matters connected with the issues found by the jury, it will be deemed that the court found on such matters in order to support the judgment.”
The next case upon the exact question was Transportation Co. v. Winters, 222 S. W. 541, by the Commission of Appeals. These decisions have been repeatedly followed by the Commission of Appeals and by the several Courts of Civil Appeals; and in many of the decisions of the latter writs of error have been denied.
In Transportation Co. v. Winters, the question was essential to the judgment recommended by the Commission, which was adopted by and made the judgment of the Supreme Court, and as said by us in Oil Co. v. Meredith, 258 S. W. 556:
“Until further light is shed upon this subject by the Supreme Court, we think the holdings of the Commission which are essential to the judgments adopted are entitled to be regarded as having the express sanction of the Supreme Court, and therefore to be followed as authority.”
In view of the long line of decisions, both by the Commission of Appeals and the several Courts of Civil Appeals, the question here presented, we think, should be regarded as a settled rule of practice in this state.
There is a further consideration in this regard which we think entitled to great weight. The cited decisions of the Commission and quite a number of those by the Courts of Civil Appeals were rendered prior to the codification of the Civil Statutes in 1925. In that codification no substantial change was made in the practice statutes here involved, and this codification constituted a re-enactment of those statutes. The 'familiar •rule that the re-enactment of a statute without substantial change carries with it the previous construction placed thereon by the courts is clearly applicable here.