AUSTIN - The Texas Supreme Court on Friday reversed an appellate court that revived a lawsuit brought on behalf of a man who was injured while trimming a tree and died a month later.
Representing the estate of Reuben Hitchcock, Kristen Hitchcock Takara filed suit against Andrew Jackson, alleging negligence.
According to the high court’s opinion, Reuben Hitchcock fell to the ground while he was standing in a tractor’s front-end loader and trimming his neighbor’s tree. He was hospitalized and died about a month later.
Takara sued asserting the neighbor, Jackson, was negligent in ignoring product safety warnings and allowing Hitchcock, who suffered lifelong intellectual deficiencies, to trim the tree in that manner and with no safety harness.
The opinion states that the jury failed to find any negligence of either Jackson or Hitchcock, and the trial court rendered a take-nothing judgment. A divided court of appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial court’s admission of the lay testimony of another neighbor, Valerie McElwrath, constituted harmful error.
The high court could not agree with the court of appeals’ conclusion that the admission of McElwrath’s testimony, even if erroneous, would constitute harmful, reversible error.
“We hold that the court of appeals erred both in concluding that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting McElwrath’s testimony and in determining that the admission of her testimony probably caused the rendition of an improper judgment,” the opinion states. “We therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and render judgment for Jackson.”
Supreme Court case No. 22-0288