Court Opinion

ID: 9735314
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:08:48.007534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:56.618578
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE LEWIS, dissenting: "What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, act II, sc. ii, 43. I dislike disagreeing with my colleagues, but I just cannot see how plaintiff’s negligence is different from plaintiff’s contributory negligence. The point is, plaintiff had the burden of proving that defendant was negligent, and plaintiff did so by proving defendant’s employee was negligent. Who was defendant’s employee that was so negligent? Why it was none other than plaintiff. If plaintiff’s negligence was so great as to be imputed to defendant, how can we say that plaintiff was not contributorily negligent? There must be two different meanings for the word "negligence,” depending on whose ox is being gored. The evidence for purposes of a motion for a directed verdict by plaintiff on the issue of contributory negligence must be construed most favorably for defendant. (Pedrick v. Peoria & Eastern R.R. Co. (1967), 37 Ill. 2d 494, 229 N.E.2d 504.) Thus, the evidence showed that plaintiff was responsible for keeping the back or bed of the truck clean and orderly. He did not do so. Plaintiff could and should have taken some time to straighten the truck up, but he did not. Plaintiff could and should have taken the time to clear a path to where he wished to place the saw, but he did not. Plaintiff could have laid the saw down on a tool box (this matter was vigorously disputed), stepped over materials in the truck, and positioned himself better to move the saw to the floor of the truck, but he did not. Plaintiff, after receiving the saw from the assistant foreman, only then looked for a place to set the saw, instead of deciding, before he accepted the saw, where he was going to place the saw. Plaintiff reached out to place the saw in a small clear spot instead of positioning himself so that he could bend his knees and set the saw straight down. Clearly, the jury could find that the party who caused the accident was the plaintiff. In fact, if you exclude plaintiff’s acts as the cause of the accident, there is not anyone else or any other agency that we can point the finger at as the cause of plaintiff’s injury. The facts in this case are more one-sided than the facts in Uhrhan v. Union Pacific R.R. Co. (1993), 155 Ill. 2d 537, 617 N.E.2d 1182, because in Uhrhan someone other than plaintiff left the wire along the tracks, plaintiff was busy doing his job by signaling and keeping his eye on the other switchmen, and at one time the railroad had recognized the danger and hired people to walk along the tracks to clean up the debris. In spite of all this, the supreme court said that the jury should have been allowed to decide if plaintiff should have been aware of the possibility of debris alongside the track and kept a lookout. In the case at bar, the evidence could easily be construed that there was not any other person or outside agency that caused the accident other than the plaintiff himself. The trial judge predicated his ruling in the case at bar on the appellate court decision in Uhrhan, which the supreme court then reversed. (Uhrhan, 155 Ill. 2d 537, 617 N.E.2d 1182.) Plaintiff, in this appeal, shifted his reliance to this court’s opinion in O’Ryan v. CSX Transportation, Inc. (1993), 255 Ill. App. 3d 214, 626 N.E.2d 374. No attention was paid to the ranting and raving contained in the dissent. The supreme court, however, did not reverse this court’s decision in O’Ryan. It vacated the opinion of this court without comment pursuant to its supervisory authority. (O’Ryan v. CSX Transportation, Inc. (1994), 155 Ill. 2d 565, 630 N.E.2d 443.) I do not claim to be a genius, but I believe that the supreme court was sending this court a message. Simply put, courts should quit devising ways that remove the issue of contributory negligence from consideration by a jury. (It would be interesting to see what a jury would do in this case with the contributory negligence issue. Would the jury find the railroad negligent based on plaintiff’s acts or omissions and then find plaintiff only 25% contributorily negligent, or would the jury find plaintiff 100% contributorily negligent?) There does not seem to be a dispute that the trial court erred in allowing evidence and giving instructions late in the trial as to a new theory concerning irrelevant OSHA violations. Surely we should reverse on those grounds alone. The admission into evidence, by plaintiff, of defendant’s surveillance videotapes of plaintiff raises an interesting issue that, most likely, will increasingly confront the courts. Plaintiff obviously wished to prejudice the jury against defendant’s "spying,” and apparently plaintiff was successful when one looks at the jury’s verdict that awarded plaintiff, injured when he was 34, more than twice the expected lifetime earnings for a better job than he held, for a disease that many people possess and overcome, for an injury that plaintiff would eventually suffer from regardless of all precautions taken, and for an injury that did not require surgery and did not prevent him from being retrained for and procuring a less strenuous job. Should the courts or the legislature encourage surveillance to weed out malingering plaintiffs, or should the courts discourage surveillance by allowing plaintiffs to use the videotapes merely to show that defendants "spied” on plaintiffs? At least three courts have ruled against plaintiffs on the issue of using defendants’ surveillance against defendants. (See Hall v. In-Photo Surveillance Co. (1995), 271 Ill. 3d 852; DiMichel v. South Buffalo Ry. Co. (1992), 80 N.Y.2d 184, 604 N.E.2d 63, 590 N.Y.S.2d 1; Scaggs v. Consolidated R. Corp. (7th Cir. 1993), 6 F.3d 1290.) Whether courts should or should not encourage surveillance by defendants is a public policy question that should only be decided by the legislature or the supreme court. Appellate and trial courts should confine themselves to only answering the issue of whether the evidence was relevant. The problem in this case is that plaintiff did not introduce the videotapes for the purpose of showing a day in his life; rather, the primary purpose of plaintiff was to poison the jury against defendant for "spying” on plaintiff. If the videotape had shown plaintiff to be suffering from his injuries, I would have no problem with its admission by plaintiff. Likewise, if the film had shown plaintiff playing golf or leaping into his convertible, I would have no problem with an offer by defendant. Both offers by the parties would be relevant to prove or disprove plaintiff’s injuries. In the case at bar, it was doubtful, however, that the videotapes exhibited either plaintiff’s injuries or the lack thereof. Moreover, whether or not defendant "spied” did not prove or disprove plaintiff’s injury or the extent thereof. The issue of "spying,” even if the videotapes were relevant, should have been kept out of the trial until we have some direction by the legislature or the supreme court as to public policy. Finally, I do not believe that it is fair for either plaintiff or defendant to change the theories contained in the pleadings, either on the day of or during the trial. (If defendant had been allowed to add an affirmative defense during the trial citing mandatory compliance with a statute as authority, we would have reversed in a summary order.) This is especially true when the party raises Federal statutes. This court has witnessed an increasing number of cases where counsel at the last minute raises a Federal statute and a new theory and talks the trial judge into giving incomplete instructions as to that statute to the jury, and we later discover that the statute does not even apply. In this case there were OSHA regulations (29 U.S.C. § 651 et seq. (1988)) and the Locomotive Inspection Act (45 U.S.C. § 23 (1988)), both of which did not apply. We should not be rewarding the offending party, because all we are doing is encouraging both plaintiffs and defendants to wait until the last minute to spring a surprise on their opponents. The courts should demand and require that the parties define the issues before trial; otherwise, let us stop deluding ourselves that the courts wish to remove surprise as an element from the trial. Accordingly, I would reverse, as there was very little about this trial that was fair.