Title: Eckel v. Breeze

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

Affirmed May 11, 1960.
*573 Bernard P. Kelly, Medford, argued the cause and filed the brief for appellant.
O.H. Bengston, Medford, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent.
Before McALLISTER, Chief Justice, and ROSSMAN, GOODWIN and HARRIS, Justices.
AFFIRMED.
ROSSMAN, J.
This is an appeal by the plaintiff from an order of the circuit court which sustained the defendant's motion for a new trial. The order was made after the circuit court had entered judgment in the plaintiff's favor in the sums of $1,000 general and $4,000 punitive damages based upon the jury's verdict in those amounts. The action was for assault and battery. The order which awarded a new trial was predicated upon a finding that two of the jurors separately made investigations of the locus in quo and that one of them had informed other jurors, while the jury was deliberating upon its verdict, that her investigation disclosed that the defendant, contrary to his testimony given to the jury, could not have seen from Third and Fir Streets the plaintiff's automobile at Third and Grape Streets (in Medford).
The motion for a new trial averred that during the trial and
Forming a part of the motion was the affidavit of Claire M. Rickard, one of the jurors who served in the cause. In her affidavit Mrs. Rickard swore that another member of the jury by the name of Alice M. Harris told the jurors while they were deliberating upon the verdict that she and another of the jurors went separately to the intersection of Third and Fir Streets
The plaintiff, in resisting the motion for a new trial, filed the affidavit of the aforementioned Alice M. Harris in which the latter conceded that during the trial she visited the intersection of Third and Fir *575 Streets but swore that she went there, not to make investigations as a juror, but because in going from the Court House to her husband's place of business Third and Fir Streets was upon her route. She explained in her affidavit that she went every noon to her husband's place of business while she served as a juror because the two ate lunch together. Mrs. Harris conceded in her affidavit that, "I casually observed various land marks which entered into the case." Her affidavit did not deny the statement attributed to her in the affidavit of Mrs. Rickard that she (Mrs. Harris) told the other jurors that the defendant (Breeze) could not have seen the automobile of the plaintiff (Eckel) if he drove his truck into the intersection of Third and Fir Streets and there stopped. Likewise, neither Mrs. Harris's affidavit nor any other document took issue with the statement in Mrs. Rickard's affidavit, "That said examinations of said premises by said jurors were without any instruction, or consent, or knowledge, of the Court, or either the plaintiff or the defendant."
The trial judge set forth his disposition of the issues submitted by the motion for a new trial in a memorandum opinion which is very good. We adopt it as our own, but will amplify it by an expression of our views concerning some contentions which are presented in the appellant's (plaintiff's) brief but which were not voiced in the circuit court. The trial judge's memorandum, with the exception of a part which states facts that we have already mentioned, reads as follows:
4. The plaintiff attacks the sufficiency of the motion for a new trial by contending that it did not comply *583 with the demands of ORS 17.620 as applied in Hooton v. Jarman Chevrolet Co., Inc., 135 Or 269, 296 P 36. The section of our laws just cited says:
We believe that when the affidavit which accompanied the motion and to which it referred is read in complement with it, the demands of ORS 17.620 are fully met. See also Lyons v. Browning, 170 Or 350, 133 P2d 599.
The plaintiff also argues that when a motion for a new trial is based upon charges of misconduct by a juror the moving party must allege that both he and his counsel were ignorant of the misconduct until after the trial. It will be recalled that Mrs. Rickard's affidavit, in referring to the misconduct of the two jurors, averred that the trial judge and the parties knew nothing of it when it occurred. Since the two jurors who had made the unauthorized inspection did not tell their fellow jurors until the jury was deliberating upon its verdict that their inspection disclosed that the defendant could not have seen from Third and Fir Streets the plaintiff when he was at Third and Grape Streets, it is clear that the defendant could not have known of the prejudicial conduct until after the jury was discharged. Likewise, the situation just mentioned renders it clear that only a juror such as Mrs. Rickard had the knowledge that could enable her to reveal the prejudicial conduct. We have mentioned the fact that Mrs. Harris's affidavit, which was filed after Mrs. Rickard had made her affidavit, took no issue with the statement made by Mrs. Rickard of which we have just *584 taken notice. We believe that the motion for a new trial was sufficient.
Several other jurisdictions take the view which was employed in Schneider v. Moe, supra, that a juror's affidavit may be employed to reveal an unauthorized inspection of the locus in quo. Some of the authorities are cited in 53 Am Jur, Trial, p 773, § 1111; 66 CJS, New Trial, p 420, § 169 (i); and 46 CJ, New Trial, p 356, § 377 (note 4).
The above disposes of all contentions submitted by the plaintiff-appellant.
Affirmed.
[*]  The language just quoted was taken by the Schneider opinion from In Matter of Vanderbilt, 127 App Div 408, 111 NYS 558.