Opinion ID: 2332424
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Motion to Set Aside the Verdict

Text: As with many of the issues involved, which the parties have carefully and skillfully briefed, there is no substantial disagreement as to the principles of law governing review of defendant's post-trial motion to set aside the verdict as against the weight of the evidence. V.R.C.P. 59 preserves the former practice. The question for review here is whether the trial court has abused its discretion to an extent that injustice would result from sustaining the ruling. The discretion of this Court is not involved, and that of the trial court should not be exercised, where different minds can reasonably come to different conclusions on the evidence. O'Brien v. Dewey, 120 Vt. 340, 348, 143 A.2d 130, 134-35 (1958); Russell v. Pilger, 113 Vt. 537, 550-52, 37 A.2d 403, 411-12 (1944). Appellant argues eloquently about the need, in our consideration, to discount the manifestly incredible or physically impossible. The principle is a sound one, but we cannot accept its application. Against two reasonably consistent versions of the accident, from plaintiff and his companion, defendant marshalled a number of witnesses who testified, in general, that they either did not see any brush at the scene of the accident, or that it was physically impossible for such growth to exist given defendant's careful grooming of the Interstate trail. Quite apart from the usual opportunity given the trial court to observe a witness's candor and reaction, numerous other matters, apparent from the record, preclude adopting defendant's version of the accident in this Court as a matter of law. Its principal expert witness purported to qualify in so many differing fields of expertise that some of his testimony could well have been excluded. Some of his conclusions were badly shaken by cross-examination. Seven members of the ski patrol, defendant's employees, gave remarkably similar versions of the physical setting, but actual measurements were lacking, and the terrain of the whole accident scene was acknowledged by defendant to have been changed the following summer, with the involved boulder vanishing, never to be identified again. The ski patrol testimony was also badly damaged by rejection of their own entries on accident reports, denial of a transcribed statement, nonproduction of reports they claimed to have filed in the regular course of business, and admission of a group pow-wow to prepare their testimony just before trial with all present. We have already reviewed at length the testimony presented by the plaintiff, and its repetition would serve no useful purpose. His story is not, in our view, anything approaching a physical impossibility, and we can easily understand the reluctance of the jury to accept the type of opinion evidence presented to discredit it. Noteworthy is the testimony of a photographic expert that infra-red photographs proved conclusively the absence of any growth under the snow, but his admission on cross-examination that they also showed no growth below the snow where two trees and a rock projected above it. The evidence did not convince the jury that plaintiff's version of the happening was either incredible or impossible. Even absent the opportunity to observe the witnesses involved, a review of that evidence falls far short of convincing us to that effect. No error appears in the trial court's denial of defendant's motion for a new trial on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence.