Opinion ID: 2379342
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Back Injury

Text: The next issue involves a back injury which appellee alleged was the result of the motorcycle accident. Both appellants contend that the withdrawal of a juror and cautionary instructions should have followed argument and testimony on appellee's back injury and that their absence mandates a new trial. They base this on the following rule of law. Pennsylvania case law is clear that in a personal injury case when there is no obvious causal relationship between the accident and the injury, unequivocal medical testimony is necessary to establish the causal connection. Albert v. Alter, 252 Pa.Super. 203 at 224, 381 A.2d 459 at 470 (1977). The back injury was introduced by appellee into the case at three points: in appellee's opening argument; in appellee's testimony; and in appellee's closing argument. Appellant's objected in a timely fashion at the opening argument. The issue is, therefore, preserved for our review in that instance. [7] However, appellants failed to object at the time of appellee's testimony or at the closing argument. As a consequence, this issue was not properly preserved in those contexts. Dilliplaine v. Lehigh Valley Trust Co., 457 Pa. 255, 322 A.2d 114 (1974). Of course, once an objection has been properly made, counsel is not obliged to repeatedly voice objections in a tendentious manner. However, counsel is required to repeat an objection when the grounds for it recur in separate phases of the trial. [8] This is required because the validity of an objection may change during the course of a trial. This is precisely what occurred in the instant trial. While the trial court did not sustain the objection made to the opening argument  prefering to wait and see what evidence appellee could introduce to establish an obvious causal relationship  in its charge to the jury the trial court did specifically instruct them to disregard the back injury claim. This procedural history raises a rather intricate question. Assuming, arguendo, that the trial court erred in not sustaining appellants' objection to the opening argument, did the charge cure that error so that appellants have no substantive issue on appeal? In answering this question it is first necessary to note what type of error we are not treating. Some objections are to errors which are so inflammable and prejudicial that a cautionary instruction will not suffice. Vereb v. Markowitz, 379 Pa. 344 at 352, 108 A.2d 774 at 778 (1954). For this category of error a curative charge to disregard or even an immediate cautionary instruction are insufficient. [9] Here we are dealing with an error which, if it occurred at all, is undoubtedly not of an inflammable or dramatically prejudicial nature. In its argument appellant Harley-Davidson includes the following quotation from a case of this Court. The prejudicial comments once implanted in the minds of the jurors could be removed only by immediate cautionary instructions to the jury. Millen v. Miller, 224 Pa.Super. 569 at 574, 308 A.2d 115 at 118 (1973). This isolated sentence would appear to answer the question posed above in the negative. However, a careful reading of the entire passage in which the quoted sentence appears leads to a different conclusion. Appellee argues that although the trial court did not so caution the jury, the error if there was one was cured by a comprehensive and adequate charge to the jury both on its duty to apply a reasonable man standard and as to its function in testing the credibility of witnesses. We do not agree. Plaintiff's counsel objected to counsel's closing argument immediately after the comments were made. The objections were specifically directed at the nature of the error. The prejudicial comments once implanted in the minds of the jurors could be removed only by immediate cautionary instructions to the jury. We do not believe that a charge of the court, absent specific cautionary instructions regarding error committed during the course of the trial, can adequately call the jury's attention to such error. Id. The law as we read it is as follows: 1. A general charge, correct in and of itself, but which does not include a specific cautionary reference to the prior error, will not serve to correct a trial court's error in not issuing a cautionary instruction at the time of the objection. 2. A charge which includes a specific instruction to disregard the matter objected to can cure the error committed in not issuing a cautionary instruction at the time of the objection. Since the charge below did include a specific instruction to disregard the back injury claim, this case falls into the second of these two categories. The charge did cure the error, (if, indeed, there was any), in not issuing a cautionary instruction at the time of the objection. There is, thus, no need for us to determine if there was error committed by the court below in not issuing such a cautionary instruction after the opening argument. [10]