Murphy v. Arcos
| Decision Date | 11 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 05-18-01342-CV,05-18-01342-CV |
| Citation | 615 S.W.3d 676 |
| Parties | Kenneth D. MURPHY, Appellant v. Alfonso Felipe Mejia ARCOS, Appellee |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Robert B. Gilbreath, Hawkins Parnell & Young LLP, J. Mark Hansen, Suzanne I. Calvert & Associates, Ryan C. Hale, Lathrop Gage, Dallas, for Appellant.
Frank David Stone, Law Offices of Domingo A. Garcia, P.C., Ramon Gonzalez, Artemio Fernandez, The Law Office of Domingo Garcia, P.C., Kirk L. Pittard, Tammy Holt, Durham, Pittard & Spalding, LLP, Dallas, for Appellee.
Before Justices Myers, Carlyle, and Evans
Appellee Alfonso Felipe Mejia Arcos filed a motion for en banc rehearing. On our own motion, we withdraw our opinion and judgment of July 17, 2020. This is now the opinion of the Court.
This is an appeal from a personal injury lawsuit arising out of an automobile accident between appellant Kenneth D. Murphy and appellee Alfonso Felipe Mejia Arcos. During jury selection, the trial court sustained Mejia's Batson challenges to peremptory strikes exercised against prospective jurors 7 and 20, but denied his Batson challenge to prospective juror 6. See Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). The jury found for Mejia and awarded $1,070,500. Three weeks after trial and without a hearing, the trial court granted Mejia's motion for judgment by signing a judgment based on the verdict. In response to Murphy's subsequent motions, Mejia sought and obtained leave of court to file his second amended petition to increase his maximum amount pleaded from $200,000 to conform to the verdict. The trial court signed an amended final judgment the same day it granted leave to Mejia to file his second amended petition.
In two issues, Murphy contends the trial court erred by (1) sustaining two of Mejia's Batson challenges and (2) granting Mejia's motion for leave to amend his first amended petition to conform to the jury's damages award and granting judgment in excess of $200,000. We conclude in the first issue the trial court did not abuse its discretion in granting Mejia's Batson challenges.
Murphy's second issue presents a matter of first impression. In our original opinion, we concluded the trial court abused its discretion granting leave to file a trial amendment after judgment and erred in granting judgment in excess of the maximum amount in Mejia's live pleading. Having now considered the arguments Mejia urged for the first time in his motion for en banc rehearing, we conclude that the more reasonable view is that the amended final judgment had the legal effect of vacating the original judgment as though it had never been entered, so Mejia's motion for leave to file his second amended petition preceded the amended final judgment. The result of this analysis is the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it granted Mejia leave to file his amended petition, so the trial court did not err in granting the amended final judgment in the full amount awarded by the jury. We therefore affirm the judgment of the trial court.
Mejia sued Murphy for personal injury damages arising out of a November 2015 rear-end collision on Garland Road in Dallas County. Murphy denied liability, and the case proceeded to a jury trial. We focus on the procedural facts related to Murphy's two issues.
The trial court instructed the lawyers before they began voir dire that the court would raise and deal with certain issues including any prospective juror's difficulty with English.1 When the trial court read the portion of the general instructions requiring the prospective jurors to follow the instructions being read to them,2 the trial court sought to emphasize the point by asking the following questions which resulted in several prospective jurors identifying themselves as having difficulty with English, including prospective jurors 7 and 20:
In addition to prospective jurors 7 and 20, others self-identified as having difficulty with English. Also, prospective juror 6 identified herself as having been hit from the rear while stopped at a stop sign and still feeling pain in her neck from injuries she sustained in the collision. Other prospective jurors also said they had been involved in collisions.
During the attorneys' opportunity to question the venire panel, Murphy's counsel asked prospective juror 7 these questions:
When the lawyers finished their questions, the prospective jurors were excused to wait in the hall and told some of them might be called back into the courtroom individually. Prospective juror 7 gave these answers to questions:
After prospective juror 7 left the courtroom, there was no discussion, motion, or ruling about him. Other jurors were interviewed, then the trial court and counsel had this exchange with prospective juror 20:
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