Court Opinion

ID: 9790639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:56:40.183081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:30.697975
License: Public Domain

DRAPER, J.
I concur in the judgment. The giving of instructions defining indirect evidence and the weight to be given to it certainly would not be error. It may have been preferable procedure. But the question here is whether refusal to give them, if error, was prejudicial to plaintiffs.
Harold Gina was the only witness who testified that he saw David at the moment of impact. He testified that David was off the paved roadway, and on the unpaved shoulder, when he was struck. By inference, this is evidence that defendant’s car was off the roadway when it struck David. Defendant did not see David, but testified that his ear never swerved from the paved roadway. It requires one mental step to conclude that the car was therefore on the roadway at the moment of *9impact, but, even if this be direct evidence, defendant’s testimony was but indirect evidence that David was on the roadway when struck. All the other evidence, including the testimony of Miss Van Sickle and the evidence of damage to the car and of location of the body, the boot, and the articles David was carrying, was indirect evidence on the issues of negligence and proximate cause. But I do not see that plaintiffs’ requested instruction 25 (BAJI 22) would have aided the jury in so classifying that evidence. Able lawyers and judges, having long experience with the definitions of direct and indirect evidence, have differed as to the classification of specific items of evidence. I cannot conclude that the several code sections quoted in the proposed instruction, if read to the jury here, would have identified indirect evidence sufficiently to give beneficial effect to plaintiffs’ requested instruction 26 (portions of BAJI 25), stating that negligence and proximate cause may be proved by indirect evidence.
One item of indirect evidence was clearly defined to the jurors. They were instructed that David was presumed to have exercised due care, that this presumption is a form of evidence, to be weighed against any contrary evidence, and that the evidence, rather than conjecture or speculation, is required to rebut the presumption. This instruction was clear and direct. It placed upon defendant the burden of overcoming the presumption, a burden which required him to resort almost wholly to circumstantial evidence. If the somewhat stilted and confusing definition of indirect evidence could have had any effect, it seems that it would aid defendant in overcoming the well-defined presumption and the testimony of Gina, the only eyewitness. In my opinion, the refusal of these instructions was not prejudicial to plaintiffs.