G. H. & S. A. R'y Co. v. Marsden
G. H. & S. A. R'y Co. v. Marsden
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
§ 1001. Argument of counsel; rules relating to; new trial granted for violation of rules, when, etc. It was in derogation of the fundamental elements of a fair trial for the court to permit the plaintiff’s counsel, in argument before the jury, to offer, for their consideration, statements of pertinent and material facts resting upon his supposed and directly asserted personal knowledge of them, when none such had been testified to by him as a witness. The matter embraced by his statement was not merely in itself pertinent, and tending to influence the minds of the jury, if they gave credit to his personal integrity and truthfulness, but it had relation to an issue of fact concerning which there was material and substantial conflict in the testimony of the plaintiff’s witnesses on the one hand, and that of the defendant’s witnesses on the other; and the statement of the counsel tended to confirm the evidence of the plaintiff’s witnesses, by showing their consistency in having made the same or similar statements to him as those to which they had testified on the trial. The refusal of the court to interpose (an objection being made by defendant’s counsel), and failing otherwise to attempt to counteract the injurious tendency of the counsel’s statements, if not a mark of approval given by the court in the presence of the jury of the course thus pursued, and an indorsement of the right, under the circumstances, of the plaintiff’s counsel thus to supplement and add to the force of the testimony of-plaintiff’s witnesses, at least had the tendency to leave the effect of a highly improper test for determining the rights of the parties, undirected and not qualified by such judicial action, that from which, if the court had corrected the wrong, we might have been able to presume
The thirty-ninth rule for district and county courts provides that counsel shall be required to confine the argument strictly to the evidence, and to the arguments of opposing counsel. Rule 41 provides that “ the court will not be required to wait for objections to be made when the rules as to argument are violated, but should they not be noticed and corrected by the court, opposing counsel may ask leave of the court to rise and present his point of objection.” Rule 121 provides that “any supposed violation of these rules, to the prejudice of a party, may be reserved by bill of exception, and assigned as error by the party who may conceive' himself aggrieved by such supposed violation.” Whilst a violation of this rule will not require in all cases the granting a new trial, yet its violation may often not only render it proper to grant a new trial, but require an appellate court to reverse a judgment for a refusal so to do. If it plainly appears that the district or county judge, in such refusal, has abused the discretion vested in him of granting or refusing a new trial, or if the refusal of it has involved the violation of a clear legal right, the action of the' court will be revised and the judgment reversed. [Ables v. Donley, 8 Tex. 331.] It is true that a new trial will not be awarded of course because irregularities or errors-have been committed on the trial which do not affect the
§ 1003. Damages on breach of contract; remote and consequential. Damages, such as do not directly and naturally result from the breach of a contract, and are not reasonably supposed to have existed in the contemplation of the parties to the contract, are remote and consequential, and cannot be recovered.
Eeversed and remanded.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.