Court Opinion

ID: 9755138
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:27:42.739628+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:03.422622
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING
CARTER, Justice.
In her motion for rehearing, Helen Keeling complains the original opinion did not specifically address her issue that a conflict existed between two of the jury determinations. The jury found that Ar-rendell lacked testamentary capacity to execute the will and also that she had been unduly influenced regarding the will. Keeling complains these two findings were inconsistent and mutually exclusive.
However, after the jury’s verdict, Keeling filed a motion for the trial court to disregard the finding of undue influence and alleged that such finding had had no support in the evidence. The trial court granted that motion and entered such an order. No complaint was made on appeal of that ruling. Keeling argues that, despite the trial court’s ruling, the conflict resulted in a “mutual destruction of the findings” of both undue influence and lack of testamentary capacity. Without analyzing Keeling’s argument that the jury’s findings were inconsistent and even if we assume, for purposes of the argument, they were inconsistent, we disagree with Keeling’s analysis.
In granting the motion to disregard the jury’s finding on undue influence, the trial court necessarily found that there was “no support in the evidence” for that jury de*505termination. See Tex.R. Civ. P. 301. That order has not been challenged on appeal. The net effect of the trial court’s uncontested order is an adjudication that no evidence supported the jury’s answer regarding undue influence. The trial court’s determination that no evidence supported the finding of undue influence resolved any potential conflict in the jury’s findings. Consequently, only the jury’s finding of lack of testamentary capacity was relevant on appeal. Keeling challenged the sufficiency of the evidence regarding that jury determination on appeal. In our opinion, we explained that, due to an incomplete record, all evidence sufficiency challenges necessarily failed.
We overrule the motion for rehearing.