Court Opinion

ID: 9442773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:58:54.382628+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:13.452156
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the decision and in all that Judge Clark said, except that I disagree with the tenor of his general remarks about the value and purpose of special verdicts. See Skidmore v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 2 Cir., 167 F.2d 54, 70. I agree with Judge Learned Hand’s suggestion in his concurring opinion in that case that “it would be desirable to take special verdicts more often.” Judge Hand continued: “True, it would often expose the general verdict to defeat by showing how irrational had been the operation of the juror’s minds. However, like my brother Frank, I am not among those who appear to esteem the system just because it gives rein to the passional element of our nature, however inevitably that may enter all our conclusions.' I should like to subject a verdict, as narrowly as was practical, to a review which should make it in fact, what we very elaborately pretend that it should be: a decision based upon law.” Sunderland’s brilliant article,1 which Judge Clark cites, does not, I think, support Judge Clark’s rather grudging approval of such fact-verdicts.
In a very recent opinion, this court has expressed regret that, on one of the issues of fact, the judge did not request the jury’s special finding.2 I cannot go along with *844Judge Clark’s expression of doubt about the lack of value of a special verdict in the instant case or others like it. Several courts have recently said it was desirable to obtain such a verdict on issues no more simple than that involved here. In one such case, Pacific Greyhound Lines v. Zane, 9 Cir., 160 F.2d 731, the court said that Rule 49 was “designed to encourage and facilitate use of special verdict or in the alternative the general verdict accompanied by the jury’s answers to inter-, rogatories as to issues of fact.” And see Phillips Petroleum v. Bynum, 5 Cir., 155 F.2d 196, 199. Indeed, Judge Magruder, speaking for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, has recognized the desirability of special verdicts in criminal cases. See Chandler v. U. S., 1 Cir., 171 F.2d 921, 942; Best v. U. S., 1 Cir., 184 F.2d 131, 137; Malatkofski v. U. S., 1 Cir., 179 F.2d 905, 918. See also Haupt v. U. S., 330 U.S. 631, 641, note 1, 67 S.Ct. 874, 91 L.Ed. 1145.

. Sunderland, Verdicts, General and Special, 29 Yale L.J. (1920) 253. Pertinent portions of that article are quoted in Skidmore v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 2 Cir., 167 F.2d 54 at pages 60-61.

. Person v. Cauldwell-Wingate Company Inc., 2 Cir., 1951, 187 F.2d 832.