holding that a question in the jury charge that defined the “unfair practice in the business of insurance” as “any act or series of acts which is arbitrary, without justification, or takes advantage of a person to the extent that an unjust or inequitable result is obtained” was defective because the statute limited the actions for which the defendant could be liable and the instruction did not reflect those limitations
How later courts described this case
- holding that a question in the jury charge that defined the “unfair practice in the business of insurance” as “any act or series of acts which is arbitrary, without justification, or takes advantage of a person to the extent that an unjust or inequitable result is obtained” was defective because the statute limited the actions for which the defendant could be liable and the instruction did not reflect those limitations
- holding that trial court erred in rendering take-nothing judgment notwithstanding jury=s verdict in favor of plaintiff based on defendant=s properly preserved charge error and concluding that proper remedy was for trial court to grant new trial based on the charge error
- explaining that a jury finding may be disregarded if it is unsupported by evidence or is immaterial, and that a question is immaterial if it should not have been submitted, has been rendered immaterial by other findings, or calls for a finding beyond the jury’s province
- holding that if trial court submits defective instruction as to theory of liability, remedy is new trial as opposed to judgment notwithstanding verdict, if legally sufficient evidence supports new trial
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice DOGGETT
delivered his supplemental dissenting opinion on motion for rehearing.
Justice is like a train that’s nearly always late.
1
Today justice remains very much off track and off schedule at the Texas Supreme Court. Timely justice, indeed, even timely injustice, has not been achieved. The application in this cause was filed in this Court on January 24, 1990. Not until June 30, 1993 was an opinion issued by the majority. No oral argument was ever provided the parties. The motion for rehearing has lingered here without decision for another half of a year. And now, over four years after this Court was asked to act, the majority is permitting the parties to start all over again with a retrial of a matter last considered by a jury seven years ago in 1987.
This court has directed district and statutory county court judges to “ensure that all cases are brought to trial or final disposition” for nonjury matters “[wjithin 12 months from appearance date.” Rule 6 of Rules of Judicial Administration. It mandates local judges to “adopt rules to provide for the orderly administration” of cases by requiring “dismissals for want of prosecution so as to achieve and maintain compliance with the time standards of Rule 6.” Rule 9 of Rules of Judicial Administration. But there are no time standards which the majority uniformly applies to itself. Had the opinion here been a case, it would have long ago been dismissed for want of prosecution. Unfortunately the litigants in this case had no comparable remedy.
This is not justice. I renew my dissent.
APPENDIX
[To Opinion of Justice DOGGETT]
“To avoid cluttering” the dissent, I append this response to today’s “Appendix.” 876 S.W.2d at 158. The hollow defense contained in that writing for the four years that have elapsed while the Natural Furniture Store awaited an answer from this Court echoes Justice Hecht’s prior insistence that my concern with timely disposition of causes, and particularly those for which he has principal responsibility, is misplaced. See, e.g., Delaney v. University of Houston, 835 S.W.2d 56 (Tex.1992) (seventeen month post argument delay in addressing rape victim’s claim based on three-page affidavit); Greathouse v. Charter Nat’l Bank-Southwest, 851 S.W.2d 173 (Tex.1992) (sixteen month post argument delay in addressing single narrow commercial, issue with modest record); Hines v. Hash, 843 S.W.2d 464 (Tex.1992) (thirteen month post argument delay in addressing consumer’s single legal question based on stipulated facts). See also Schick v. McGee, 843 S.W.2d 473 (Tex.1992) (Doggett, J., concurring on Order granting Motion to Dismiss) (after nineteen months of waiting for this Court to act, parties gave up and filed joint motion to *161 dismiss on which this Court deferred action an additional two months). 2
The excuses advanced demonstrate the complete lack of justification for this delay superimposed on delay. None of the cases of which Spencer was purportedly “in the midst,” 876 S.W.2d at 158, are relied upon by Justice Hecht in either of the opinions that he has authored here. Moreover, both the Eagle Star motion for rehearing and the modest eight pages of briefing from amici have been available since July. And surely it did not require Justice Hecht seven months “to eliminate” part of one paragraph which had become unnecessary in his writing. Id.
Most peculiarly, the author of today’s opinion defends this extraordinary delay by noting that I did not object recently when he took seven months to issue his separate writing on rehearing in another case, In re J.W.T., 872 S.W.2d 189 (1994). The same argument could well have been made in Sage Street Assoc. v. Northdale Constr. Co., 863 S.W.2d 438 (Tex.1993), where similar, wholly unjustified delay occurred. I agree fully that there is ample reason to broaden my complaint, since the source of the problem is indeed the same in all of these.
. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, A Precocious AutobiograPHY 90 (1963).
. I also expressed my concern in that writing about the unfair delay in Spencer at a time when it had already been pending at this Court for two and one-half years. 843 S.W.2d at 474. Unfortunately, this was to no avail.