Opinion ID: 601844
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Person Responsible

Text: 48 In its Previous Case Instruction, the district court used the phrase person responsible to describe Morrison. From the context, it seems that the district court was using person responsible as a synonym for responsible party under CERCLA. The district court did not define person responsible as used in its instructions. When technical legal usage gives ordinary words a specific definition which is distinct from the ordinary meaning of those words, a court should explain those terms for the jury. Id. (failure to define key legal terms resulted in deficient instructions); Harold v. Corwin, 846 F.2d 1148, 1150-51 (8th Cir.1988) (prejudicial error occurred when the district court read the jury a misleading dictionary definition for a legal term). 49 Webster's Dictionary defines responsible as: likely to be called upon to answer; answerable as the primary cause, motive, or agent whether of evil or good; creditable or chargeable with the result. Webster's New International Dictionary 1935, (3d ed., 1965) (emphasis added). The jury was instructed that: [y]ou are entitled to consider ... evidence in the light of your own observations and experiences in the affairs of life, and that [t]he law demands of you a just verdict, unaffected by anything except the evidence, your common sense, and the law as I give it to you. Without appropriate instructions, a jury of lay persons will not know that responsible person as used in CERCLA litigation, 7 or person responsible as used in the district court's instructions, bears little relation to this everyday English definition of responsible. In the absence of a definition of the term person responsible the jury was left to apply their common sense. Unfortunately, in this case, the common sense definition of person responsible conflicts with the applicable law. The omission of a CERCLA definition of person responsible resulted in prejudice to Morrison.