Freeman v. Harrison

• Citation: 143 S.W. 686
• Parties: FREEMAN v. HARRISON et al.<SMALL><SUP>†</SUP></SMALL>
• Decision Date: 31 January 1912
• Court: Court of Appeals of Texas

Page 686

143 S.W. 686

FREEMAN v. HARRISON et al.^†

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Texarkana.

January 31, 1912.

Rehearing Denied February 8, 1912.

Appeal from District Court, Smith County; R. W. Simpson, Judge.

Action by E. V. Harrison, on his own behalf and as next friend for his minor child, Ernest Harrison, against Thomas J. Freeman, receiver of the International & Great Northern Railroad Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Jno. M. King and Morris & Fowler, for appellant. Johnson & Edwards, for appellee.

WILLSON, C. J.

Appellant, as receiver of the International & Great Northern Railroad Company, on September 3, 1910, controlled and operated said company's line of railway crossing East Locust street, in the city of Tyler. On the afternoon of that day, as Ernest B. Harrison, a boy 13 years of age, was driving in a buggy along said street and across said company's tracks, cars moving across said street on one of said tracks collided with the buggy, throwing him therefrom to the ground in front of the moving cars, which ran over him, and, besides otherwise injuring him, so crushed his right arm as to necessitate its amputation about two inches above the elbow. The collision was not due to any fault on the part of the boy, but was due to negligence on the part of appellant. On the trial of a suit for damages brought by his father, appellee E. V. Harrison, on his own behalf and as next friend for Ernest, the jury returned a verdict in favor of said E. V. Harrison in his own right for the sum of $1,400, and in his favor as next friend for Ernest for the sum of $15,000. At the instance of said E. V. Harrison, the verdict in his favor in his own right was set aside, his suit so far as it was in his own behalf was dismissed, and a judgment was rendered in his favor as the boy's next friend for said sum of $15,000.

Appellant insists that the verdict in favor of the father as next friend was excessive, and that the court below erred in refusing to grant him a new trial on that ground. We are not prepared to say that the action of the court was erroneous. The boy was entitled to recover a sum which would fairly compensate him for the injuries he suffered. The law imposed on the jury the duty to determine the sum, and it did not furnish them a rule by which to determine it. The law contemplated that the jury would determine it by an exercise of their best judgment, influenced alone by the circumstances of the case as shown by the testimony. In the absence of anything indicating the truth to be to the contrary, the trial court should have assumed that they did so determine it.

Appellant points to the amount of the verdict as evidence in itself that the jury in rendering it were "influenced by passion, or prejudice or some other improper motive," and cites cases as supporting its contention. Appellee, combating the contention, cites other cases as supporting a contrary view. We think verdicts and adjudications in other cases are of little, if any, value in determining such a question. If the circumstances of two such cases were the same, that a jury in one such case reached a conclusion different from that reached by a jury in the other would not necessarily, or even probably, indicate that the conclusion of either jury was due to improper influences; for men equally fair minded, equally anxious to be just, and influenced by the testimony alone might very well honestly differ as to what sum would fairly compensate a plaintiff who had suffered such injuries. But the...