Court Opinion

ID: 9707385
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:10:08.613797+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:31.981674
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from Division VIII (d) and, since that is the .sole basis for review, I would affirm.
The majority says it was reversible error to permit an answer, over objection, which disclosed defendant was operating a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s license. The question, objection, answer, and ruling of the court are set out verbatim in the majority opinion.
The objection made at trial was simply that the question called for evidence which was incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. The majority acknowledges our rule that such a general objection ordinarily preserves nothing for review but reaches the conclusion it is sufficient here because the ground urged was “manifest” and needed no elaboration to properly alert the trial court to the reasons for it.
I must disagree with this on several grounds. In the first place, as the majority points out, the evidence might have been relevant upon a showing of causal connection between the failure to have a valid driver’s license and the eventual accident. When the question was asked this possibility had not yet been foreclosed. Perhaps the State should have been required to commit itself on this issue then; or perhaps a motion to strike the testimony with a cautionary instruction to the jury should have been made when the causal connection was not eventually established. But those things do not touch the matter before us.
I cannot accept the argument that this question when asked was so obviously and patently irrelevant that the trial court should have recognized, without more, the real basis for the objection. I would hold there is nothing preserved by this record for review.
There is another even stronger reason why the majority conclusion is untenable. It is this: The point upon which the case is reversed is not an issue on this appeal. The irrelevancy which the majority says was so manifest it was immediately recognizable apparently completely escaped defendant’s counsel, although he is the one who made the objection. It is not relied on in the written brief; it was not argued orally. The sole reason now urged is that the question and answer discloses defendant was guilty of another crime (driving without a valid driver’s license in violation of section 321.174, The Code) under circumstances not within any of the exceptions which permit the admission of such evidence.
Unless the majority is prepared to say an objection to testimony as incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial raises the specific ground now relied on — and I cannot concede it would do so — then the matter is being raised here for the first time. We have frequently said error cannot be first raised on appeal. See State v. Coffee, 182 N.W.2d 390, 393 (Iowa 1970) and authorities there cited.
While I do not agree the admission of this evidence was reversible error, there should be no new trial even assuming the majority is correct in that conclusion. The majority, I believe, finds itself in the strange position of reversing on a ground asserted in the trial court but abandoned on appeal. Defendant, on the other hand, seeks a reversal for reasons urged for the first time on appeal.
Neither position is sound and the trial court should be affirmed.