Court Opinion

ID: 9717355
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:02:12.752579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:52.772299
License: Public Domain

Wilkins, J.
(concurring, with whom Abrams, J., joins). I disagree with the court that the general rule in a civil action is that, once evidence of an extraneous influence on a jury is proved, a new trial follows automatically unless the party who prevailed before the jury can demonstrate that there is *790no reasonable likelihood that the losing party was prejudiced by what occurred. In this case, the court unnecessarily throws its intellectual hands up and rules there must be a new trial because there is no way fairly to assess the prejudice to.the plaintiffs.
The proper rule should be that, to obtain a new trial, the losing party must establish prejudice in the sense that the jury might reasonably have reached a different result if they had not had the extraneous information before them. Cf. DeJesus v. Yogel, 404 Mass. 44, 48-49 (1989) (standard for granting new trial because of erroneous exclusion of evidence: whether trier of fact would have reached different result with excluded evidence before it).
This case involves more than an unauthorized view by members of a jury, as the court initially characterizes the case. The jurors who went to the accident scene not only took a view, but they acted as amateur experts. They went so far beyond their proper role of deciding the case on the evidence presented in court that the likely prejudice to the plaintiffs is established as a matter of law.
The difference in the placing of the burden concerning prejudice makes no difference in the conclusion the court and I reach. For the future, however, a requirement that the losing party must show that she was prejudiced by extraneous information before the jury seems preferable to a rule that places the burden on the winning party. The concern for the rights of criminal defendants that placed the burden on the Commonwealth to disprove prejudice in Commonwealth v. Fidler, 377 Mass. 192, 201 (1979), has no parallel in a civil action. Where else does a party in a civil action obtain .a new trial without showing that an error in the trial was prejudicial? See G. L. c. 231, §§ 119 and 132 (1990 ed.) (no new trial unless the error “injuriously affected the substantial rights of the parties”).