Court Opinion

ID: 9483728
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:30:07.327554+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:48.478169
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I agree with Judge Silberman’s view as to why it was error for the court to give the “claims-minded-plaintiff” instruction. Because the charge goes only to the credibility of witnesses and is procedural, the federal court should apply federal law— here the judgment implicit in Rule 608(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence — not the District of Columbia rule.
I hesitate to reverse, however, because the likelihood that the error affected the outcome seems remote. The sole witness identifying misconduct by a Metrobus was Beverly Robinson, the uninsured motorist whose car struck Hemphill’s. As recorded in a police report of the accident, Robinson at the time made no mention of a bus, much less one lurching into her lane. Instead she had evidently chalked the collision up to a “gas spill in the street”. Once sued by Mrs. Hemphill, however, Mrs. Robinson contacted Hemphill’s attorney and explained that a Metrobus forced her to hit Hemphill. Shortly after this new recollection, Hemphill named WMATA as a defendant and dropped Robinson from the suit. Rose Robinson, Beverly’s sister and passenger at the time of the accident, corroborated the existence of the bus but not the testimony that it cut their car off or forced Beverly Robinson to slam on her brakes. On this evidence, I find it hard to believe that the presence of the erroneous charge played the slightest causal role in producing in the jury verdict exonerating WMA-TA. In the interests of having the case yield a clear resolution of the Erie issue, however, I defer to my colleagues’ belief that the error in the charge was not harmless and join the judgment.