Court Opinion

ID: 9452222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:33:09.196051+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:06.987923
License: Public Domain

FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge-
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I agree that the judgment should be reversed and a new trial awarded. But I believe that on the retrial the defendant should be permitted to inquire on cross-examination if the plaintiff made any acknowledgment that he was available for work, which would contradict his testimony of inability to work as a result of the defendant’s negligence.
I do not believe that Eichel v. New York Central Railroad Co., 375 U.S. 253, 84 S.Ct. 316, 11 L.Ed.2d 307 (1963) bars such an inquiry. It is true that it forbids evidence of benefits received under the Railroad Retirement Act1 if offered in mitigation of damages and also bars their use as evidence of a motive for malingering by an employee asserting a claim under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. These restrictions, however, can be fully maintained while permitting the defendant to exercise a litigant’s time honored right to elicit from a plaintiff his own contradiction of his claim of extensive injury. A trial judge has enough *34discretion to establish adequate safeguards to exclude from the jury the prohibited information and yet at the same time admit relevant evidence.
I think such safeguards can readily be erected here while giving the jury the benefit of important evidence as to the extent of the plaintiff’s injury. Since the court now excludes all of this evidence including what I consider the good along with the bad, I cannot agree with the restrictions imposed on the award of a new trial.

. 45U.S.C. § 228b (a) (4),