Opinion ID: 1198908
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The trial-within-a-trial instruction

Text: PCI next contends that the trial court erred in instructing the jury to apply the trial-within-a-trial approach in deciding PCI's legal malpractice claim. Jury Instruction Number 20 directed the jury to determine what the outcome would have been if [PCI's] lawsuit against [A/H] and Ebasco Services had not been dismissed. Thus, you are hearing this case as if you were the jury in the [PCI v. A/H-Ebasco] case. The instruction required PCI to prove that it would have been successful in the underlying suit, that it would have been awarded damages, and that the judgment would have been collectible from A/H or Ebasco. In challenging the trial court's instruction, PCI urges us to leave it within the discretion of the trial judge to determine the manner in which the plaintiff may proceed to prove its claim for damages. However, PCI has failed to establish that the trial court believed itself precluded from exercising discretion on the issue. Although our decisions have twice approvingly mentioned the trial-within-a-trial approach, [10] we have not expressly adopted it. Given that we have never formally embraced the approach, the trial court was not necessarily constrained to use it. PCI cites Lieberman v. Employers Insurance of Wausau, 84 N.J. 325, 419 A.2d 417, 426-27 (1980), for the proposition that the trial-within-a-trial approach should not have been applied to this case. Yet Lieberman is readily distinguishable; there, in finding the approach improper, the court relied primarily on the reversed roles of the parties in the malpractice and underlying actions: the plaintiff in the malpractice case had been the defendant in the underlying suit. See id., 419 A.2d at 426. The court in Lieberman stated that, if the trial-within-a-trial approach were used in those circumstances, the jury would not obtain an accurate evidential reflection or semblance of the original action. Id. at 427. [11] PCI claims that the trial-within-a-trial approach was unsuitable to this case for an entirely different reason: because several witnesses with testimony favorable to PCI have died. PCI's argument is unpersuasive. As we have previously noted in discussing PCI's proposed spoliation instruction, PCI has failed to demonstrate that it lost any materially favorable evidence as a result of negligence by TH. Hence, the claim of lost evidence does not support PCI's argument that the trial court erred in adopting the trial-within-a-trial approach. [12]