Opinion

Texas Employers Ins. Ass'n v. Poe

  • 152 Tex. 18
  • 253 S.W.2d 645
  • 1952 Tex. LEXIS 435
Court
Texas Supreme Court
Filed
Dec 10, 1952
Status
Published
Author
Garwood
On the bench
Wilson, Garwood
Cited by
16 cases
Authority
More cited than 7.6%

The opinion

Mr. Justice Garwood,

dissenting.

I regret to be unable to agree that the trial court correctly refused a mistrial. The question was in effect a statement by counsel of inadmissible evidence that normally would be quite as prejudicial, as if counsel for the employee had similarly stated in a suit by the insurance carrier that the Board had awarded total and permanent disability. The statement is not “inflamatory” but one of the type which, in dealing with improper argument, we have usually held not curable by an appropriate admonition of the trial judge, while at the same time holding the “inflamatory” type to be curable. See Wade v. Texas Employeers Ins. Ass’n., 150 Texas 557 , 244 S. W. 2d 197 . There is no great difference between a statement by counsel made to a witness in the presence of the jury and one made by him to the jury in the course of argument. The importance of the error is not so much in the particular case as in the fact that, with our decision as a precedent, lawyers who are so inclined, may *21 now with impunity transgress the rules and thus cause others to do the same in self defense, with resultant lowering of our standards of practice.

Opinion delivered December 10, 1952.

Rehearing overruled January 14, 1953.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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