Opinion ID: 1927643
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Missing Party Instruction

Text: Defendant also attacks the presiding justice's instruction that permitted the jury, in answering Question No. 5 on apparent authority, to draw an unfavorable inference from Catherine Winchester's failure to testify. [10] We, however, can find no obvious error in this missing party instruction as given in the circumstances of this trial. In the way this case was tried to the jury, Catherine Winchester was the one and only remaining defendant. Hugh Winchester had defaulted. Her personal contract liability turned on whether her own conduct justified a third party's belief that her husband, Hugh Winchester, acted as her agent. In the face of the adverse testimony of Twin Island's witnesses regarding Catherine Winchester's conduct, she chose, without explanation, not to testify or even appear at the trial. In those circumstances, the unexplained failure of [defendant] to testify with respect to material facts within [her] own knowledge, or to take the stand and deny the existence of material facts testified to by the adverse party, [was] a proper matter for the consideration of the jury. Scribner v. Cyr, 148 Me. 329, 333, 93 A.2d 126, 129 (1952). A long line of Maine cases supports the missing party instruction. See Page v. Smith, 25 Me. (12 Shepley) 256, 266 (1845); Perkins v. Hitchcock, 49 Me. 468, 477 (1860); Union Bank v. Stone, 50 Me. 595, 599 (1862); York v. Mathis, 103 Me. 67, 81, 68 A. 746, 752 (1907); Devine v. Tierney and Findlen, 139 Me. 50, 55-56; 27 A.2d 134, 136 (1942); Berry v. Adams, 145 Me. 291, 295, 75 A.2d 461, 464 (1950). See generally 2 Wigmore on Evidence § 289 (Chadbourn rev.1979); 29 Am.Jur.2d Evidence § 188 (1967). The situation in the case at bar is substantially different from that in State v. Brewer, 505 A.2d 774 (Me.1985), where we held that the failure of a party to call a witness does not permit the opposing party to argue, or the factfinder to draw, any inference as to whether the witness's testimony would be favorable or unfavorable to either party. Id. at 777 (emphasis added). That decision was founded upon a reexamination of the missing witness rule in light of the Maine Rules of Evidence. Those rules repudiate the common law principle that a party vouches for the credibility of its witnesses. See Field & Murray, Maine Evidence § 607.1 (1976). M.R. Evid. 607 removed any basis for the missing witness rule, by providing: The credibility of a witness may be attacked by any party, including the party calling him. See also M.R.Evid. 607 Advisers' Note, reprinted in Field & Murray, Maine Evidence 136. Clearly, the rationale behind our ruling in State v. Brewer does not apply to this case. Defendant need not vouch for her witnesses; nonetheless, the jury is entitled to consider whether she is willing to vouch for her own position in the circumstances of this civil litigation. As the case was presented to the jury, no one had a greater interest than defendant in defeating the contract claim and no one was in a better position than defendant to take the stand and deny the existence of material facts testified to by the adverse party. The facts of her relationship with Hugh were peculiarly within her knowledge. To prohibit the jury from considering the implications flowing naturally from Catherine Winchester's unexplained absence from the trial, as she now urges us to do, would be to require the jury to disregard highly relevant and probative evidence. To direct a jury to disregard [defendant's failure to testify] would be to direct them to disregard a fact existent, material and probative. Union Bank v. Stone, 50 Me. at 599. A fortiori, in the circumstances of this case, the presiding justice did not commit any obvious error in giving the missing party instruction.