Court Opinion

ID: 9648106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:03:07.424146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:56.320798
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Cohen :
The plaintiffs’ counsel in his summation made repeated reference to the illegality of the sale of intoxicants to a minor. When, however, the defendant excepted to these remarks, the trial judge approved them in front of the jury. In his charge, also properly excepted to, the trial judge repeatedly stated that it is a violation of the law to sell intoxicants to a minor. As a result, the jury may have believed that it could find for the plaintiffs without finding that the minor plaintiff was visibly intoxicated when defendants sold him alcoholic beverages. To correctly award damages in this case, however, an affirmative finding on the latter issue is imperative.
*252This error should not have occurred, for counsel and the lower court were specifically told in our prior decision in this case that the accident “did not occur because he was a minor or because he, as a minor, had been served some intoxicants in violation of the law.” Smith v.. Clark, 411 Pa. 142, 190 A. 2d 441 (1963). The summation and the charge thus patently manifest an attempt to studiously avoid the teachings of the Smith case. The disrespect for this Court inherent in such conduct is further evidenced by plaintiffs’ counsel’s failure to file a brief before this Court or to offer an explanation as to why one was not filed.
I dissent.