Court Opinion

ID: 9829306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:11:15.609144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:59.742630
License: Public Domain

On Appellees’ Second Motion for Rehearing.
Upon a former day of this term, upon the application of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company and the Panhandle & Santa Eé Railway Company, this court by its opinion and order so corrected its original judgment reversing this cause as to leave the judgment ip favor of the two railway companies just named undisturbed, and ap-pellee now presents an application for the filing of a second motion for rehearing. It will be granted, and the clerk is ordered to file the same, and the motion will be set down for hearing in its due order, to the end that argument and authorities, which we invite, may be submitted upon the question hereinafter stated.
As stated, in disposing of the Atchi-son, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company and the Panhandle & Santa Fé Railway Com-, pany, the jury in the court below in. answer to special issues found that neither of said companies was guilty of negligence in the shipment involved in this litigation, and the trial court in entering judgment upon these issues expressly found in their favor and entered judgment that, as to these companies, the plaintiff should take nothing and pay costs. In view of this condition of the record, we are still of the opinion that appellee has no cause of complaint as to the Panhandle & Sant Eé Railway Company, and that as to that company at least we were correct in leaving the judgment below in its favor undisturbed. But a different principle perhaps applies in the ease of the Atchi-son, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company. That company was the initial carrier in the shipment, and, under the federal laws relating to the shipment, it being an interstate-one, it is made liable to a shipper for his damages in event they are caused by its own negligence or the negligence of an intermedi-. ate carrier, and hence.it would seem, according to the authority of Burd v. San Antonio So. Ry. Co. (Tex. Com. App.) 261 S. W. 1021, by the .Commission of Appeals, that the special finding in this ease that .the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company was immaterial in view of the fact that the jury did find that the receivers of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company were guilty of negligence.
The point upon which we solicit argument and authority is whether, in view of the record, it should be held that- the appellee herein, by his failure in the court below to object to the submission of the special issues relating to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company and to the judgment of the court in its favor with no complaint thereof by cross-assignment or otherwise in this court, amounts to such waiver or abandonment of appellee’s cause of action against that company as to require us to leave the judgment below in its favor undisturbed, or, on the contrary, should we hold that ’ the judgment of the court below in favor of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company is error of such a character as that appellee is entitled to claim relief? '
The clerk is directed to notify counsel for appellee and for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Eé Railway Company of this order of setting.