Court Opinion

ID: 9828957
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:53:06.431676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:55.496434
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The briefs filed by both parties, and the arguments in connection therewith on original hearing, presented only two questions: First, whether or not the evidence under proper application of the law thereto established a common-law marriage in Texas between Gussie and Louisiana Davis; second, whether or not it was shown that Oscar Godfrey, the driver of appellees’ ear at the time of the casualty, had so turned aside to engage in an affair wholly his own as to have thereby suspended the relation of master and servant between them and himself.
In discussing this latter question the ap-pellees’ brief, after conceding that it had been shown that Godfrey was at that time the regular driver of one of appellee’s auto trucks, proceeded as if no dispute existed over whether the truck he drove caused the accident,' and this court assumed that none did in passing on the matter.
Accordingly, in determining these two questions, we did so as if they were the only ones at issue in the cause, and, after holding the trial court’s charge erroneous and the facts adduced as to the existence of a common-law marriage in Texas sufficient to establish one, further concluded that the evidence did not demonstrate that *405Oscar Godfrey bad at the time of this accident so acted on his own account a¿ to sever the relation of master and servant between himself and appellees, ending the opinion as follows:
“From these conclusions it follows that the judgment should be reversed, and that, upon another trial, the proof should be confined to the amount of damage, if any, the plaintiff in the cause sustained. That order has accordingly been entered.”
The earnest and able motion of the ap-pellees has called to our attention the fact that there was a controversy as to whether Godfrey’s truck ran over the woman, as well as other issues than the two thus before disposed of, and hence our assumption that Godfrey’s truck caused the death, and the consequent declaration that the proof should be confined upon another trial to the amount of damage plaintiff sustained, was inadvertent. We should have said that if the evidence upon these two issues upon another trial otherwise proved to be the same and showed that Godfrey’s truck killed the deceased, the trial court should not submit either of them to the jury., It was not intended to cut off a trial as' to any other matters involved. That opinion is now so corrected, leaving all other issues unaffected.
We have carefully considered the motion for rehearing as it affects these two questions formerly discussed, but are unconvinced of any error in our disposition of them. It will therefore be adhered to.
With this modification of the original opinion, the motion for rehearing is overruled.
Overruled.