Court Opinion

ID: 9682935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:19:56.967509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:43.372731
License: Public Domain

*514CADENA, Justice,
dissenting.
The uncontradicted testimony is that at a time when five jurors had voted to answer the issue in question in favor of plaintiff, one of the jurors stated that plaintiff would go to Mexico and there enjoy the money which “us taxpayers would be paying for him while he was over there.” Despite an admonition, the juror persisted in advancing this argument for about 45 minutes and the jury finally voted 11-1 against plaintiff on the issue in question.
There is nothing in the record to indicate that the juror advancing this argument against answering the issue favorably to plaintiff was referring to unemployment compensation. The statement was clearly to the effect that if the issue were answered in favor of plaintiff, the taxpayers would have to pay for it. Carreon, the juror who testified concerning the statement, said, “I guess they believed it was to be unemployment compensation . . . .” At best this is the surmise of the witness, attempting to determine the relevancy of the remark concerning the burden of taxpayers, concerning the mental processes of other members of the jury. He stated that unemployment compensation was the “only check” he could think of.
The testimony of the only other juror who testified, Phipps, in no way contradicts the testimony of Carreon. He testified that he did not remember, because of the time involved, whether the statement relating to burden on the taxpayers was made or not. He stated, “it could have been said,” adding that he could not “say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ definitely.” He did not say that if the statement had been made he would have remembered it. In the absence of such evidence, it can hardly be argued that his failure to remember the statement is “not made,” particularly in view of his admission that the statement could have been made. Nor does his lack of recollection imply that the statement, if made, was “of slight significance.” “I can’t remember” is not the equivalent of “it didn’t happen,” particularly in view of the added statement, “it could have been said,” and in the absence of a claim by the witness that if it had happened he would remember it.
This case does not involve “faulty, illogical, arbitrary, or bizarre” deductions from the evidence. It involves simply a statement, finding no support in the evidence, concerning the onus which would be placed on the backs of the jurors, as taxpayers, if the issue were answered favorably to plaintiff. It clearly was intended to induce the jurors to focus their attention on the effect of the verdict on their own financial wellbe-ing, rather than on drawing inferences from any part of the testimony.
The contention that the statement, if made, would result in prejudice to the insurance company rather than to the plaintiff is unpersuasive. A statement to the effect that an affirmative answer to an issue would result in a heavier tax burden on the jurors is hardly an argument in favor of answering the issue “yes” in order to assume such additional burden. It is not easy to believe that after it was pointed out that an affirmative answer would result in a burden to taxpayers, four jurors changed their vote from “no” to “yes.” The discussion of the effect of the verdict on the jurors as taxpayers did not involve an analysis of any testimony by a witness from the witness stand. The discussion concerned itself solely with “testimony” by a juror. The fact that the juror’s “testimony” was incorrect is beside the point.