Court Opinion

ID: 9561832
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:17:04.892192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:35.229250
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
With respect to Division 1, I agree that the charge was harmless, but I confine that conclusion to this case. The court twice recently considered this charge to be erroneous. Ammons v. Six Flags Over Ga., 172 Ga. App. 210 (2) (323 SE2d 2) (1984); Coker v. Casey, 178 Ga. App. 682 (1) (344 SE2d 662) (1986).
In those cases the charge was deemed harmless because the plaintiffs, who complained of the charge, had won jury verdicts several times greater than the special damages claimed. Thus it was shown conclusively that the charge did not affect the verdict since the jury rejected the idea that the injuries were exaggerated or magnified.
In this case, plaintiffs lost entirely. One of their arguments is that the erroneous charge was harmful because it had an adverse effect on the jury’s consideration of their credibility generally and thus was related to the initial question of liability. That is, although it targeted the issue of damages expressly, it cast a pall, so to speak, over witness veracity on the whole, unlawfully diminishing it with respect to the crucial issue of liability.
While I am not prepared to say that such a charge is never harmless error when a plaintiff loses on liability, I believe that is the case here. We have earlier recognized that the charge relates to the subject of the trustworthiness of the witnesses’ testimony. Brewer v. Henson, 96 Ga. App. 501, 503 (100 SE2d 661) (1957) held that it was not error to refuse it because the jury was given “complete and accurate instructions as to the credibility of the witnesses.”
However, taking the charge as a whole, Patterson v. State, 239 Ga. 409, 415 (4a) (238 SE2d 2) (1977), it is clearly evident that the court was instructing solely on the issue of damages. It had totally left the subject of liability and entered the arena of damages, and the charge was confined to that latter subject. Thus I conclude there was *803no sinister overlap.
Decided February 17, 1987.
James M. Skipper, Jr., for appellants.
Marc T. Treadwell, Barbara S. Boyer, Joseph H. Chambless, R. Bruce Benton, for appellees.