PJC General Negligence 2024

P RESERVATION OF C HARGE E RROR

PJC 33.2

PJC 33.2

Broad-Form Issues and the Casteel Doctrine (Comment) C AVEAT

On June 28, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court decided Horton v. Kan sas City Southern Railway Co. , 692 S.W.3d 112 (Tex. 2024), addressing issues surrounding broad-form jury charge submission and the Casteel doctrine as articulated in Casteel v. Crown Life Insurance Co. , 22 S.W.3d 378 (Tex. 2000). As of the date of publica tion, the Committee has not had sufficient time to update this volume to incorporate the court’s holdings or reasoning in Horton . Thus, the Committee encourages practitioners to review Horton and subse quent applications of that decision when drafting and submitting their charges. ____________________________________________________________ In Crown Life Insurance Co. v. Casteel , 22 S.W.3d 378 (Tex. 2000), the supreme court held that inclusion of a legally invalid theory in a broad-form liability question taints the question and requires a new trial. Casteel , 22 S.W.3d at 388–89. The court has since extended this rule to legal sufficiency challenges to an element of a broad-form damages question, see Harris County v. Smith , 96 S.W.3d 230, 235–36 (Tex. 2002), and to complaints about inclusion of an invalid liability theory in a comparative responsibil ity finding, see Romero v. KPH Consolidation, Inc. , 166 S.W.3d 212, 226–28 (Tex. 2005). The supreme court has recently clarified that harmful error must be presumed, as in Casteel , when an appellate court cannot determine whether the jury found liability on an improper basis because a necessary limiting instruction was not submitted despite a timely request or objection. Benge v. Williams , 548S.W.3d466, 475–76 (Tex.2018) (reiterating this proposition and stating that “we have twice held that when the ques tion allows a finding of liability based on evidence that cannot support recovery, the same presumption-of-harm rule [from Casteel ] must be applied”); see Texas Commis sion on Human Rights v. Morrison , 381S.W.3d533, 535 (Tex.2012) (percuriam); Columbia Rio Grande Healthcare, L.P. v. Hawley , 284 S.W.3d 851, 863 (Tex. 2009). When a broad-form submission is infeasible under the Casteel doctrine and a granu lated submission would cure the alleged charge defect, a specific objection to the broad form nature of the charge question is necessary to preserve error. Thota v. Young , 366 S.W.3d 678, 690–91 (Tex. 2012) (citing In re A.V. , 113 S.W.3d 355, 363 (Tex. 2003); In re B.L.D. , 113 S.W.3d 340, 349–50 (Tex. 2003)). But when a broad-form submission is infeasible under the Casteel doctrine and a granulated submission would still be errone ous because there is no evidence to support the submission of a separate question, a spe cific and timely objection “to the lack of evidence to support submission of a jury question,” to “the form of the submission,” or both is necessary. Burbage v. Burbage ,

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