Court Opinion

ID: 9447534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:37:07.866292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:04.953578
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
I concur in the affirmance of the judgment as to the defendant-appellee, the duPont Company. I concur also in the reversal of the judgments and remand of the causes for retrial as to the appellees, Atlas Powder Company and Olin-Mathieson Chemical Corporation, because of the charge of the court in, perhaps inadvertently but none the less erroneously, requiring the jury to find that the negligence of the defendants was the sole and proximate cause of the injuries.
I do not concur in, I specifically disagree with, the statement in the opinion, “The district court ruled that the plaintiff was not entitled to the theory of res ipsa loquitur in proving his case”. The statement of points relied upon by appellant in this appeal (Rec. pp. 1734-1775) does not contain any claim of, or reference to, such a ruling. I do not find in the brief of the appellant or in the record any such claim. There is discussion in all of the briefs of “the res ipsa loquitur principle”, in connection with a discussion of whether under the evidence a verdict for the defendants should have been directed. This discussion, however, is not directed to a claim that the district judge made the ruling which the majority finds he did make, but, as stated in appellant’s point 6, to the claimed error of the court “in failing to give in his charge any of the requested instructions of the plaintiff as to * * * and res ipsa loquitur”.
“The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur * * * is simply a facet of the general law that verdicts may rest upon circumstantial evidence”. Revlon, Inc. v. Buchanan, 5 Cir., 271 F.2d 795, at page 799. The district judge, recognizing this and *86stating, “There is some circumstantial evidence in this case”, gave a charge to the jury on circumstantial evidence, to which no objection was made and no exception taken.
Appellant, in his points 44 and 45 (brief pp. 266-269) does complain of the court’s failure to give his requested instructions Nos. 12 and 28, but neither in his objections and exceptions to the failure of the court to give them in charge nor in his brief does the appellant, as required by the rules, point out wherein and why the failure to give these charges was reversible error.