Court Opinion

ID: 9680592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:34:49.976867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:29.526078
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
In his motion for rehearing ap-pellee, among other things, asserts that this Court erred in failing to remand the cause for further development pursuant to Rule 434, T.R.C.P., for the reason that substantive changes in the applicable law occurred between the time of trial and the time our opinion was handed down December 1, 1966. Subsequent to the trial of the case, the Supreme Court of Texas, on March 30, 1966, handed down its opinion in the case of Texas Employers’ Insurance Ass’n v. Dossey, 402 S.W.2d 153, in which for the first time our Supreme Court used the following succinct and definite language :
“An employee has the status of a Texas employee when he has been hired in this state to work in this state and in another state as the circumstances of his employment may require. His Texas employee status is fixed in the fact of his employment to work in Texas as well as in the other state. He continues to occupy this status even though he first works in the other state.”
In our opinion we made the statement that Dossey did not change the test enunciated in Southern Underwriters v. Gallagher. We have concluded since reexamining the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hale v. Texas Employer’s Ins. Ass’n, 1951, 150 Tex. 215, 239 S.W.2d 608, at 614, that such statement is incorrect. The Supreme Court said in Hale:
“It is settled by Southern Underwriters v. Gallagher, 135 Tex. 41, 136 S.W.2d *676590, that one who has not in fact done any work in Texas for his employer before being hired to work in another state cannot be said to have acquired the status of a Texas employee and is not entitled to the benefits of the statute.”
Thus, the holding in Hale and Gallagher is to the effect that in order to recover as a Texas employee work in Texas must have preceded work in the foreign jurisdiction. This is not so under the holding in Dossey.
As in the Dossey case, appellee in this case asserts that he based his trial position upon the proposition that the Gallagher and Hale cases were controlling and that it was, therefore, necessary to establish the performance of physical work in Texas prior to the injury in the foreign jurisdiction. Thus evidently relying on the decisions in Gallagher and Hale, appellee undertook to prove not only that he entered into his contract with appellant in Texas, but also that he performed work in Texas for his employer prior to his overseas work. The jury, in answer to Special Issue No. 6, found that appellee performed no work in Texas prior to going overseas. No issue was requested by either party with respect to whether under his employment contract appellee was hired to work in Texas as well as overseas. Some such issue would in all probability have been submitted had Dossey been decided before the trial of the instant case.
Although the jury found that ap-pellee did no work in Texas prior to going overseas, we cannot assume that he would not have been requested by his employer at some time during his employment to return to Texas and engage in this State in work incident to his employment. Appel-lee’s contract was oral and was proven more or less piece-meal. There is no evidence that the oral contract as testified to was the entire contract. At the time of the trial appellee would not have considered it necessary or important to prove anything with respect to employment in Texas subsequent to his work overseas, since the test established in Dossey had not been established. It was only natural that ap-pellee’s counsel, relying on Gallagher and Hale, should make no effort to establish whether or not the oral employment contract encompassed work in Texas at some subsequent date, since under the state of the law at the time of trial such subsequent work, if any, would have been immaterial and irrelevant.
A situation quite similar to that in the instant case developed recently in the case of Scott v. Liebman, Tex.Sup.1966, 404 S.W.2d 288, p. 294. In that case the defendant relied upon a holding of the Supreme Court of Texas that the “no duty” rule could be submitted to the jury on the theory of constructive knowledge of the invitee, as held in McKee, General Contractor v. Patterson, 1954, 153 Tex. 517, 271 S.W.2d 391. The Supreme Court reversed itself in Halepeska v. Callihan Interests, Inc., 1963, 371 S.W.2d 368, and held that “constructive knowledge” was no longer material to the “no duty” rule. Recognizing this change in the law, the Supreme Court reversed and remanded the Scott case for further development consistent with the new rule, in the interest of justice.
By analogy, we have concluded in view of the change in the law as announced in the Dossey case, and the definite and specific test enunciated with respect to the status of a Texas employee in connection with extra-territorial work, it would be in the interest of justice for this Court to remand the present case for further development in light of the new rule established in Dossey.
Appellee’s motion for rehearing is granted in part.
Reversed and remanded.