Spears v. Houston Fire & Casualty Ins. Co., 12029.

• Decision Date: 02 December 1948
• Docket Number: No. 12029.,12029.
• Parties: SPEARS et al. v. HOUSTON FIRE & CASUALTY INS. CO. et al.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

215 S.W.2d 896

SPEARS et al. v. HOUSTON FIRE & CASUALTY INS. CO. et al.

No. 12029.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Galveston.

December 2, 1948.

Rehearing Denied December 23, 1948.

Appeal from District Court, Harris County; Dan W. Jackson, Judge.

Suit under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Juanita Hulsey Spears and husband against the Houston Fire & Casualty Insurance Company, insurance carrier, and an employer to set aside an award of the Industrial Accident Board. From an adverse judgment, Juanita Hulsey Spears and husband appeal.

Judgment affirmed.

Spiner & Pritchard, of Houston (Quinton Wright, of Houston, of counsel), for appellants.

Walter F. Brown and H. Fletcher Brown, both of Houston, for appellee.

GRAVES, Justice.

This appeal in a compensation cause — under undisputed facts — presents for decision here a single question of law, which may be briefly stated this way:

Did the trial court err in denying the claim of appellant, Juanita Hulsey Spears, to one-half of the compensation benefits inuring under Section 8, Art. 8306, R.C.S. of Texas, to the legal beneficiaries from the accidental death of her father, Fay N. Hulsey, while in the course of his employment, where she was only 20 years and 11 months old at the time of his death, but was then a married woman, and not dependent upon him, pursuant to further Section 8a?

The trial court, on a resort to it from a final award of the Accident Board, allowed the widow of appellant's deceased father, Isabel Hulsey, the full statutory recovery of 360 weeks' compensation against the insurance carrier, the Houston Fire and Casualty Insurance Company, holding her to be the exclusive legal beneficiary of the deceased, and such Company did not appeal therefrom, although it had contested the cause below, and has been named as an appellee upon the appeal-bond of the appellant herein.

There were also left a number of older children of her father, by a former wife, but all of them were above age and non-dependent upon the deceased, which, as indicated, left the contest as to beneficiaries of the benefits involved between the appellant and the widow of the deceased, the appellee Isabel Hulsey.

Wherefore, as appellant herself summarized it in her brief, "the fundamental basis" of her appeal is her contention that: "a 20-year old minor-daughter is a minor child, within the provisions and benefits under the Workmen's Compensation Act, Art. 8306, Sec. 8a". Her argument for that construction is ably epitomized in this presentment, embodying that view:

"The obvious purpose of the statutory-act of emancipation of the female is to increase her contractual powers, and not a lessening or deprivation of an inheritance which she would otherwise be entitled to, nor to change her status with the consequence of depriving her of vested property-rights under the Compensation Act, Article 8306, Section 8a."

This Court is unable to agree with appellant's construction; indeed, she presents no Texas authoritative decision to that purport, but cites as sustaining the principle she relies upon, the holding of the El Paso Court of Civil Appeals in Dallas Joint Stock Land Bank v. Dolan et al., Tex.Civ.App., 92 S.W.2d 1111. This case was reversed by the Supreme Court of Texas, as reported in 132 Tex. 198, 120 S.W.2d 798; but aside from that, such cause was not comparable on its facts to the one here involved, since in that instance a male person who had had his disabilities of minority removed was dealt with, hence the holding appellant so quotes and relies upon had no reference to the situation here presented of a female, who had married, nor can it be reasonably assumed that the court had an instance like the present one in mind at all.

Not only so, but to an apparently contrary purport, our Supreme Court, in the case of Teat v. Jones, 126 Tex. 480, 89 S.W.2d 987, at page 989, refers to a person whose disabilities had been removed as "a former minor"; moreover, there seems to be with us abundant authority tending to indicate that appel...