Williams v. Town of Morristown

• Decision Date: 09 July 1949
• Parties: WILLIAMS et al. v. TOWN OF MORRISTOWN et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

222 S.W.2d 615

189 Tenn. 124

WILLIAMS et al. v. TOWN OF MORRISTOWN et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

July 9, 1949

Error to Circuit Court, Hamblen County; Shelburne Ferguson, Judge.

Actions by James D. Williams, administrator of the estate of Barbara Jean Williams, and by H. S. Williams, administrator of the estate of Margaret Louise Williams, against the Town of Morristown, and its Board of Electric Light and Waterworks Commissioners. Verdicts were returned for plaintiff, and defendants' motions for directed verdicts were sustained. Judgments dismissing the actions were reversed by the Court of Appeals and defendants and plaintiffs bring certiorari.

Judgments entered on the verdicts for plaintiffs.

Hodges & Doughty, Knoxville, for complainants.

S. F Dye, Knoxville, E. R. Taylor, Morristown, for defendants.

TOMLINSON Justice.

James D. Williams, as administrator of the estate of nine year old Barbara Jean Williams, and H. S. Williams, as administrator of the estate of Margaret Louise Williams, an adult, were each awarded a verdict for $2500 against the Town of Morristown, its Board of Electric Light and Waterworks Commissioners by a jury of the Circuit Court of Hamblen County, the two cases being jointly tried. Upon that verdict the Circuit Court in each case entered a judgment that the administrator 'have and recover of the defendant the sum of $2500.00, and the costs of this cause'. The motion of the Town of Morristown for a new trial and for a directed verdict was thereafter sustained by the trial judge, and a judgment of dismissal of each case entered.

Each administrator appealed in error to the Court of Appeals. That Court reversed the judgment of the Circuit Court and remanded each case for a new trial.

The Town of Morristown accordingly filed here its petition for certiorari in each case. Each of these petitions has this day been denied without the filing of a memo for the reason that this Court concurs in the reasoning and conclusions stated in the very excellent opinion of the Court of Appeals. 222 S.W.2d 607. It will, however, be necessary to modify the opinion upon a question raised by the petition to rehear and this opinion deals with this question alone.

Within the proper time after the Court of Appeals had rendered its aforesaid opinion and thereafter ordered the case to be remanded, a petition to rehear was filed by both administrators, and joined in by the Town of Morristown. The position taken in that petition to rehear was that if the Circuit Court had erred in its conclusions of law, as held by the Court of Appeals, then the proper course for the Court of Appeals to take is to enter judgment against the Town of Morristown in each case for the amount awarded by the jury instead of remanding the case for a new trial.

The prayer of this petition to rehear joined in by all the parties is this: 'Wherefore, all parties to this litigation, the plaintiff-in-error and the respective defendants-in-error, petition the Court to modify its opinion and judgment based thereon, in and to the extent of entering judgment in this Court in favor of the respective defendants-in-error, of $2500.00, with interest from the date of the judgment below, and costs; this in lieu of the judgment for remand.'

As a matter of course, such modification of the judgment of the Court of Appeals would not have prejudiced the right of the Town of Morristown to insist by petition for certiorari, as it has, that the Court of Appeals, in reversing the judgment of the Circuit Court, erred in its conclusions as to the law.

The administrator of each of the estates mentioned has filed its petition for certiorari. The only point made is that the Court of Appeals erred in not entering a judgment of $2500 in each case instead of remanding each case for a new trial. The ...