Cookville Coal & Lumber Co. v. Evans
| Decision Date | 02 March 1911 |
| Citation | 135 S.W. 750 |
| Parties | COOKVILLE COAL & LUMBER CO. v. EVANS. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Titus County Court; W. E. Riddle, Judge.
Action by Margaret Evans against the Cookville Coal & Lumber Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.
L. E. Keeney, for appellant. Rolston & Ward, for appellee.
The appellee sued the appellant for damages for cutting down and carrying away certain standing timber situated upon land owned by her, and sought to recover its value after having been manufactured into lumber. The appellant answered by general demurrer, general denial, plea of limitation, and specially that the cutting of the timber was due to an inadvertence and mistake, and tendered into court a sum alleged to be the value of the timber before its manufacture into lumber. The case was tried before a jury, and the following verdict returned: "We, the jury, find for the plaintiff and assess her damages at the sum of $150.00, One Hundred and 50/100." Upon that verdict the court rendered judgment in favor of the plaintiff in the suit for $150. Of that ruling the appellant complains, claiming that the verdict was too uncertain and indefinite to warrant such a judgment. It is obvious that there are two separate and distinct sums stated as the amount at which the damages due the plaintiff are assessed— one for $150, and the other for $100.50. It appears that after the jury had been discharged the court, upon motion of the appellee, undertook to "reform the verdict," and make it read as if returned for $150. This action was justified upon proof by affidavit of one of the appellee's attorneys that the clerk of the court read the verdict as one for $150, and that the jurors assented upon being asked by the court if that was their finding. There is nothing to indicate that the attention of the jurors was called to the ambiguity of their language, and the verdict was received as it had been prepared and returned by them. Article 1323, Sayles' Ann. Civ. St. 1897, requires the verdict to be in writing. If there are to be any corrections as to the form, they must be made and the consent of the jurors obtained before their discharge. The verdict as quoted above was copied into and formed a part of the judgment, and so appears in the transcript. In order to ascertain what the verdict was, we must look to that record, rather than to ex parte affidavits seeking to...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Wilson v. Northern Pacific Railway Company, a Corporation
...57 Ga. 459. The jury must correct its own verdict when necessary, under proper instructions from the court. Cookville Coal & Lumber Co. v. Evans, Tex. Civ. App. , 135 S.W. 750. A trial will be granted where the verdict is uncertain as to the amount found to be due plaintiff. Goosely v. Holm......
-
Reichert v. Northern Pacific Railway Co.
... ... Fiore v. Ladd, 29 ... Ore. 528, 46 P. 145; Cookville Coal & Lumber Co. v ... Evans, Tex. Civ. App. , 135 S.W. 750; Morrissey ... ...
-
Reichert v. N. Pac. Ry. Co.
...In the case of Fiore v. Ladd, 29 Or. 528, 46 Pac. 144, also, the jury had been discharged. The same is true of Cookville Coal & Lumber Co. v. Evans (Tex. Civ. App.) 135 S. W. 750. The same is also true of Morrissey v. Morrissey, 180 Mass. 480, 62 N. E. 972. In all of these cases the court h......
-
Essery v. State
...entitled to as first rendered and accepted by the court. This is true both in civil and criminal cases (Cookville Coal & Lumber Co. v. Evans [Civ. App.] 135 S. W. 750). So the verdict, if sustained, must be held sufficient as originally It then read: "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty......