Court Opinion

ID: 9831098
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:48:59.602465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:30.930646
License: Public Domain

On Appellee’s Motion for Rehearing.
[3,4] In appellee’s motion for rehearing counsel has spent much unnecessary labor in an effort to convince this court that it erred in reversing the judgment of the lower court, because of what it conceived to be an indefinite or erroneous charge. Perhaps we were unfortunate in the use of the language in the original opinion which led counsel to such conclusion. In the original opinion, this language is used:
“We think that appellant’s eighth assignment of error, in so far as it insists that the verdict of the jury is not responsive to the sole issue in the cause, and therefore insufficient to support the judgment entered, should be sustained. The verdict of the jury, ‘We, the jury, find that the defendant Hahl did agree and undertake to procure the consent of the owners of the superior title,’ is no answer to the question as to what the parties intended and understood by the use of the clause, ‘in the full exercise and enjoyment of the contract and its terms,’ inserted in the contract of February 23, 1909. * * * From the answer of the jury, shown by their verdict, it might be inferred that they intended to find that at some time shortly before or shortly after said contract was executed Hahl did agree and undertake to procure the consent of the owners of the superior title to the extension contract, called for by said contract of February 23, 1909. If said verdict may be so understood, it is not sufficient to support the judgment entered. No part of an agreement made shortly after the contract was executed can be shown and be considered as a part thereof.”
Appellant’s eighth assignment in effect insists that the verdict of the jury above set out did not answer the sole question at issue, and therefore not sufficient basis for the judgment rendered. While it is true that we did in the original opinioh state that the charge of the court fully set out in the original opinion, submitting to the jury the only issue in the cause, was technically incorrect, we did not intend to present such technical objection as a cause for reversal, but referred to said, charge only for the purpose of pointing out what we then conceived to be the insufficiency of or vice in the verdict of the jury. However, after a more careful examination of the charge referred to as a whole, we have reached the conclusion that, while it does not submit the sole question at issue clearly, yet in view of the rule which requires us to solve the doubt in favor of the judgment of the trial court, we conclude that it did so sufficiently, and that when the verdict of the jury complained of by appellants in their eighth assignment is considered under the rule above mentioned, in connection with the charge as a whole, it sufficiently answers the only question at issue, and was sufficient upon which to base the judgment rendered. We, therefore. conclude that we were in error in reversing the judgment of the lower court by our original opinion, and we now here sustain appellee’s motion for rehearing, set aside our original judgment rendered herein on the 18th day of March, 1915, and order that the judgment of the trial court be, in all things, affirmed.
Affirmed.