Title: Bell v. Lowery
Citation: 619 So. 2d 1380
Docket Number: 1911620
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: April 30, 1993

619 So. 2d 1380 (1993)
Mose BELL, Jr.
v.
Ray LOWERY.
1911620.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
April 30, 1993.
*1381 J. Gusty Yearout and Don L. Hall of Yearout, Myers &amp; Traylor, P.C., Birmingham, for appellant.
R. Larry Bradford of Lloyd, Bradford, Schreiber &amp; Gray, P.C., Birmingham, for appellee.
ADAMS, Justice.
Mose Bell, Jr., sued Ray Lowery, alleging that Lowery had negligently maintained certain premises owned by him and that as a result of the negligent maintenance Bell's 14-year-old son Kerry Bell had drowned in a lake on those premises. He contends that because Lowery had failed to enclose the property with a fence, and because Lowery knew that children and adults fished and swam in the 17-acre lake, he had negligently failed to prevent persons from trespassing onto his property. Kerry Bell and several of his friends were swimming in the lake when Kerry drowned. Bell appeals from a judgment based on a jury verdict awarding him $15,000.
Initially, Bell argues that the trial court erred in refusing to quash the jury panel following his challenge of the defendant's use of peremptory strikes. The trial court determined that, because the defendant had stricken five of the six blacks on the jury venire, Bell had made a prima facie case of discrimination. Upon the plaintiff's showing of a prima facie case of discrimination, the burden shifted to the defendant to provide race-neutral reasons for his strikes of the five blacks. See Ex parte Bird, 594 So. 2d 676, 680 (Ala.1991), citing Ex parte Branch, 526 So. 2d 609 (Ala.1987); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986).
The record does not contain the initial questions propounded to the jury venire by the parties and, therefore, this Court has before it very little on which to review the claim of discrimination. Only the hearing following the Batson challenge is in the record before this Court. That hearing, at which the defendant offered the following reasons for his strikes, covered five pages of the record:
(R. 10-14.)
This Court has written regarding Batson challenges to peremptory strikes:
Ex parte Thomas, 601 So. 2d 56, 58 (Ala. 1992). (Citations omitted.)
We have reviewed the record very carefully and, although the question may be a close one, based on the limited record before us we must defer to the trial judge's ruling. We conclude that his refusal to quash the jury panel was not clearly erroneous. See Ex parte Lynn, 543 So. 2d 709, 712 (Ala.1988).
As to Bell's second contentionthat the trial court erred in instructing the jury with regard to contributory negligence on the part of Kerry Bellwe find that any error, if any, was harmless. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff. Thus, the jury determined that Kerry Bell had not been contributorily negligent.
AFFIRMED.
HORNSBY, C.J., and ALMON, STEAGALL and INGRAM, JJ., concur.