Court Opinion

ID: 9481888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:34:38.574944+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:38.409098
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion and desire to add only a few words. The major argument in support of affirmance in this case is that the instruction, when read as a whole, is not incorrect, or at least would not likely be misunderstood by a reasonable juror. This is a strong argument, and it has made me hesitate as to the proper result on this appeal.
In the end, however, I think the Court is doing the right thing. The amount of money awarded by the jury here indicates fairly clearly that it thought the plaintiff should have accepted the railroad’s offer to employ him as an engine man. The trouble with this approach is that the record contains no evidence of what an engine man would have been paid. If the record showed that an engine man would have made the same as Smalley had been paid as a train man before the accident, the jury’s verdict would be well grounded, and we could be sure that the arguably erroneous instruction had no effect. But as things turned out, it seems likely that the jury really thought that Smalley’s refusal of the offer of re-employment was an absolute bar to any further damages, regardless of *300what he would have earned if he had accepted the offer.
For these reasons, I conclude that the jury probably understood the instruction in the wrong way, and that a new trial on damages is the proper result.