Court Opinion

ID: 9725425
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:47:12.005158+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:15.039444
License: Public Domain

The following opinion was filed December 30, 1953:
Per Curiam
{on motion for rehearing). The plaintiff, in addition to moving after the verdict that the same be set aside and a new trial granted on the ground that certain answers to the jury were contrary to the great weight and clear preponderance of the evidence, also moved for a new trial on the following two grounds:
(1) The jury’s actions in assessing the damages for plaintiff wife’s pecuniary loss for the death of her husband establish perverseness; and
(2) Improper argument to the jury by defendant’s counsel.
Counsel for plaintiff, in their brief in support of plaintiff’s motion for rehearing, call attention to the fact that our original opinion fails to discuss these two issues although the same were properly raised in their original brief. We assure counsel that such two questions did receive our careful consideration, although not noted in our prior opinion, and we concluded that the learned trial court correctly denied the motion for new trial based on said grounds.
The jury, although properly instructed as to the necessity of answering the damage questions in the special verdict regardless of how the negligence questions were answered, at first returned a verdict in which they failed to answer the *84bsubdivision of tbe damage question relating to plaintiff’s pecuniary loss. The jury were sent back to the jury room and then returned a second time with their verdict whereby they had written the word “None” in the blank inserted in said subdivision for their answer. The trial court again sent the jury back with instructions that they must answer such subdivision by inserting “therein an amount which you [the jury] consider to be fair and just in view of all the evidence.” The jury then returned their verdict for the third time, and, in such verdict as so finally returned, the jury assessed the amount of $8,000 as plaintiff’s pecuniary loss.
In the trial court’s memorandum opinion rendered upon plaintiff’s motions after verdict, in passing on the contention that the foregoing facts establish perverseness on the part of the jury, it was stated:
“The jury apparently were of the opinion that because they had absolved the defendant from any negligence and found the deceased driver was 100 per cent responsible for the accident that it was not necessary to answer the damage question.”
The statements made by the foreman of the jury to the trial court at the time the jury returned their verdict the second time substantiate this conclusion of the trial judge, and tend to negative the claim of perverseness. There was no abuse of discretion on the part' of the trial court in finding that no perverseness was established.
We next turn to the contention that one of defendant’s counsel was guilty of making improper remarks in his argument to the jury, which necessitates the granting of a new trial. In such attorney’s opening statement to the jury, before the presentation of testimony, he stated that the evidence would show that plaintiff’s husband (the deceased driver) had been indulging in intoxicating liquor shortly before the accident. During the course of defendant’s proof, *84ca physician was called to testify to a chemical analysis of the blood of the deceased in an attempt to prove that the deceased was intoxicated at the time of the accident. However, the doctor was unable to identify the blood he had examined as being that of the deceased, and counsel for defendant dismissed the witness without the results of the blood test being testified to. Plaintiff’s counsel, in his subsequent argument to the jury, remarked about the failure of defendant’s proof to live up to the assertion made by defendant’s attorney in his opening statement that the evidence would show that the deceased was intoxicated. In reply thereto, defendant’s counsel, in his argument, stated:
“I am sorry this matter of intoxication came up. I am sorry I couldn’t bring the facts before you.”
Objection to such quoted statement was promptly made, and the trial court properly instructed the jury to disregard the same. The court later, in its formal instructions, further admonished the jury to 'disregard any “statement which has been made in this case which the court has ordered you to disregard.” In the trial court’s memorandum opinion passing on the motions after verdict, it was stated as the trial court’s conclusion that the improper statement of defendant’s counsel did not prejudice the jury and was not sufficient to justify the granting of a new trial.
We deem this to have been a matter peculiarly for the determination of the trial court and that we, therefore, will not disturb it on this appeal. Sometimes the improper statements of counsel made in argument to the jury are so prejudicial that the instructions of the trial court to disregard them cannot remove the prejudice, but we do not deem the objectionable statement in this instance to be of that category.
The motion for rehearing is denied without costs.