Court Opinion

ID: 9527627
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:32:03.221368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:59.736988
License: Public Domain

LAWSON, Justice (concurring in part and dissenting in part) :
I agree with the treatment of the written charges which were given at the request of the plaintiff below, including the holding that the giving of plaintiff’s written Charge 4 must work a reversal of the judgment of the trial court.
It is my opinion that the trial court erred to a reversal in admitting the testimony of the witness Henry G. Robinson, a so-called “professional Accident Reconstruction Consultant,” as to the speed of the Maslanlcowski automobile at point of impact.
The holding that such testimony was admissible is, in my opinion, based on a very tenuous distinction made between our cases cited in the opinion authored by the Chief Justice and the holding of the Chief Justice, in which Justices Harwood and Maddox concur. The cited cases hold, in effect, that testimony of the kind given by Robinson is not admissible when sought to be elicited from an accident investigator in the employ of the state or a municipality, despite the number of ’investigations he may have made immediately after accidents.
Perhaps if such accident investigators are hereinafter permitted to call themselves “Accident Reconstruction • Consultants’! their testimony will be admissible. . .
Not being a physicist and not iiriderstanding Mr. Robinson’s “formula,” in which the “coefficient of friction,” whatever that is, apparently played a large part, I feel compelled to the conclusion that Robinson should not have been permitted to give such testimony, thereby working a “snow job” on the jury with his impressive title. In so far as I can determine, he adopted the title himself or it was conferred upon him by his employers.
The case of Mobile City Lines v. Alexander, 249 Ala. 107, 112-113, 30 So.2d 4,8, is not mentioned in the opinion authored by the Chief Justice. In that case we said: “ . . . we think it a matter of common knowledge that when two such moving objects collide at a rate of speed as shown by the evidence in this case that they may behave in a manner which seemingly defies all the laws of physics. . . . ”
Robinson took cognizance of certain facts which existed prior to impact, as well as the manner in which the moving objects behaved after impact and says, in effect, *270that he can tell how fast one of those objects was moving at the time of impact. In my opinion, Robinson’s testimony as to the speed of the Maslanlcowski automobile. at time of impact was nothing more than a sugar-coated guess; that is, a guess sugar-coated by recitation of Robinson’s claimed academic and laboratory experiences. Those experiences aside, and I am not impressed by them, it is not shown that there was any reason to accept his opinion over that of an experienced accident investigator for a state or municipality, and the opinion' authored by the Chief Justice candidly' admits that like testimony given by such investigators would not be admissible.
' I, refrain from expressing a view as to the. action of tire trial court in refusing the general affirmative charge or charges requested by Maslankowski or his contention that the trial court erred in' overruling the grounds of his. motion for a new trial which took the position, in effect, that the verdict Was not sustained by the great weight of the evidence.