Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

50 Tex. 492

Bradshaw v. Buchanan

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1878

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1878-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. A. J. Booty. G. M. Buchanan sued J. W. and Albert Bradshaw, in the District Court of Busk county, for possession of a tract of land described in the petition, for rent, and for value of some articles of personal property alleged to have been on the premises in controversy and taken by the defendants. By amendments, it was charged that the taking by defendants was by force, wrongful, willful, and oppressive. Punitory damages were asked.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 1983

7 state decisions

30187818801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Moore, Chief Justice.

¶1This judgment must unquestionably be reversed. There is no evidence whatever in the statement of facts calling for a charge by the court on the subject of vindictive or punitory damages, or to warrant the verdict of the jury for this character of damages. There is no evidence tending to show that appellants were actuated by malice in taking and holding the house and land, as alleged by appellee, or that they did so wantonly, or with the intent to vex, harass, injure, or oppress him. On the contrary, the evidence strongly tends to show that they were actuated by no such motive. If they were, they seemed to have exhibited no outward manifestations of such feelings.

¶2To sustain the verdict in this case would, in effect, be to hold that the jury'may infer malice whenever there is evidence warranting a verdict for the plaintiff in an action of trespass quare clausam fregit.

¶3The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.

¶4Reversed and remanded.

/50/tex/492 · .json · Public domain