Opinion ID: 1798623
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Reservation of Error

Text: Rule 51 of the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure reads in part: No party may assign as error the giving or failing to give a written instruction, or the giving of an erroneous, misleading, incomplete, or otherwise improper oral charge unless he objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating the matter to which he objects and the grounds of his objection. A party waives any possible error as to a trial court's oral charge by failing to specifically object and to state grounds for the objection. See Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co., Inc. v. Sealy, 374 So.2d 877, 882-883 (Ala. 1979). Appellants made the following exception to the trial judge's charge of slander per se and presumed damages: In addition to excepting to Your Honor's charge for failure to tell the jury that whether it would be slander per se or slander per quod, plaintiff must reasonably satisfy the jury that he sustained some actual damage, in either case. And I rest my request in excepting to your charge on that in the case of Bryan v. Brown and Gertz, which is a United States Supreme Court case. I think further that the constitutional law required in order to recover for slander, be it slander per se or slander per quod, that the plaintiff bear the burden and he must satisfy the jury from the evidence that he sustained some actual damages. Appellant properly preserved this portion of the trial court's oral charge for our review by specifically objecting to the presumption of damage language in the slander per se charge by stating as grounds for the objection this Court's decision in Bryan and the United States Supreme Court case of Gertz requiring actual injury.