Court Opinion

ID: 9883615
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 01:59:47.358582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:26.835084
License: Public Domain

BELL, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court of Special Appeals, per Bishop, J., issued a comprehensive, well-reasoned opinion in this case. I agree both with its analysis and its conclusions. Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.
In reversing and remanding for a new trial on compensatory liability, the majority rejects two of the intermediate appellate court’s conclusions, namely that the evidence relating to TLVs offered by the petitioners was properly excluded and that the evidence offered in support of punitive damages was sufficient under the test enunciated in Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia, 325 Md. 420, 462, 601 A.2d 633, 653-54, reh’g denied, 325 Md. 665, 602 A.2d 1182 (1992). In neither instance is the rejection justified.
The intermediate appellate court pointed out that the respondents did not rely, as the majority seems to insist had to be done, on the state of the art evidence to prove the extent of the petitioners’ knowledge or what they should have known. Instead, they proved the petitioners’ actual knowledge—that the petitioners were aware of the dangers of asbestos. Consequently, pointing out that “[i]t is not mandatory ... that knowledge, or lack thereof, be established with state of the art evidence,” ACandS v. Asner, 104 Md.App. 608, 638, 657 A.2d 379, 394 (1995), citing and quoting Zenobia, 325 Md. at 433, 601 A.2d at 639, the court concluded, appropriately, I believe,
once a defendant’s actual knowledge is shown, state of the art evidence is not necessary to show what the defendant *188“should have known” or “could have known.” The “should have known” component can make the heavy burden placed on a plaintiff in a strict liability failure to warn case less onerous. If a plaintiff is successful, however, in proving actual knowledge, it is axiomatic that the plaintiff need not prove what the defendant “should have known.”
Id. at 639, 657 A.2d at 394.
The Court of Special Appeals was also correct in holding that the punitive damages evidence was sufficient. The contrary argument proceeds on the premise that the petitioner ACandS did not have actual knowledge because, even though they were exposed to the same conditions at the same location, the respondents were “by-standers,” rather than insulators. Reje„cting that argument, the intermediate appellate court reasoned:
In [U.S. Gypsum Co. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 336 Md. 145, 188-89, 647 A.2d 405, 427 (1994) ] ... the injured class of persons, to which the Court referred in the above quotation[1], were ordinary building users exposed to an asbestos product after it had already been installed in the building. The evidence actually introduced in Gypsum focussed solely upon hazards posed to industry workers and workers in related trades, workers such as Asner and Wilson, and not hazards posed to budding users. Id. at 190, 647 A.2d 405. In Smith v. Celotex Corp., 387 Pa.Super. 340, 564 A.2d 209 (1989), also relied upon by AC & S, the court made a justifiable risk distinction between *189asbestos factory workers handling raw asbestos and construction workers handling the finished product at locations with different working conditions. Although we agree with AC & S that risk distinctions can exist between classes of persons exposed to asbestos, depending on the degree, frequency, and duration of exposure, the evidence in the case sub judice supports the conclusion that Asner and Wilson were exposed to AC & S products in a comparable degree, frequency, and duration as AC & S insulators. Any risk distinction in the case sub judice between AC & S insulators and Asner and Wilson, as it relates to the “actual malice” necessary for punitive damages is, therefore, illusory.
Id. at 624-25, 657 A.2d at 387. As previously stated, I am in complete accord.2

ON MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION

RODOWSKY, Judge.
The plaintiffs have moved for reconsideration of Part I.B of this Court’s opinion in which we held that the erroneous exclusion of TLV evidence by the trial court was prejudicial to the defendants. That ruling resulted in a remand for a new trial on the issue of liability for compensatory damages. In their motion plaintiffs submit that “additional evidence was admitted during the cross-claim portion of the trial, which, by any measure, satisfied the proffers of proof made by the defendants on [the issue of TLVs].” Appellees’ Motion for Reconsideration at 3. We deny the motion because the evidence now relied upon by the plaintiffs in their motion was not referred to by the plaintiffs in their brief as appellees and also because a limiting instruction, to which no one objected, *190prevented the jury from considering that evidence on the claim of the plaintiffs against the defendants.
The additional evidence on which the plaintiffs now rely is found in the deposition testimony of Willis Hazard and of Dr. Garrit Schepers. Excerpts from the Hazard and the Schepers depositions were read to the jury on November 29, 1993, the twelfth day of trial, as part of the respective defendants’ cases as cross-claimants against certain cross-claim defendants.
In their brief as appellees plaintiffs did not refer us to the Hazard or the Schepers depositions. That brief argued that, even if the trial court erred in its ruling granting the plaintiffs’ motion in limine excluding TLV evidence that was proffered by the defendants, the error was not prejudicial because other evidence which the jury could consider on the claim of the plaintiffs against the defendants substantially covered that which the defendants had proffered. That material came into evidence principally on the cross-examination of one or more plaintiffs’ witnesses during plaintiffs’ case in chief. We rejected this argument in our original opinion based on a comparison of the defendants’ proffers to the evidence to which we were referred by the appellees’ brief.
Neither deposition was made part of the five volume, 2,437 page, joint record extract. All references in Appellees’ Motion for Reconsideration to testimony in the depositions are references to the original trial transcript..
Maryland Rule 8—601(c) requires that the record extract “contain all parts of the record that are reasonably necessary for the determination of the questions presented by the appeal .... ” Rule 8-504(a)(4), dealing with statements of facts in an appellant’s and in an appellee’s brief, provides that “[rjeference shall be made to the pages of the record extract supporting the assertions.”
Two liberalizations were made in these longstanding requirements by the revision of Title 8 of the Maryland Rules that became effective July 1, 1988. One liberalization is the deferred record extract. Rule 8-501 (l). A deferred record extract would have been of little assistance to the problem at *191hand. Inasmuch as references to the two depositions were not included in the appellees’ brief, deferral of the preparation of the record extract in order to include all that was included in a party’s brief would not have picked up the two depositions in the instant matter.
The second liberalization is in Rule 8—501(c), dealing with contents of the record extract. That rule now includes the following concluding sentence: “The fact that a part of the record is not included in the record extract shall not preclude a party from relying on it or the appellate court from considering it.”
Obviously, the new provision is not to be abused. Compare Naughton v. Paul Jones & Co., 190 Md. 599, 604, 59 A.2d 496, 498 (1948) (disregard of Maryland rule requiring appendix to appellant’s brief to contain all parts of the record party desires Court to read may result in dismissal of an appeal); Butler v. Reed-Avery Co., 186 Md. 686, 689-90, 48 A.2d 436, 438 (1946) (rules requiring litigant’s brief to contain an index which must include those parts of the record desired to be read by the Court are “plain, concise, and should be easily understood. They provide a means for each side to get before this [C]ourt all the evidence that it is desired to be read by the [C]ourt. When the appellant disregards or violates these rules his case may be dismissed on motion, or by this [C]ourt on its own motion.”); Condry v. Laurie, 186 Md. 194, 197, 46 A.2d 196, 197 (1946) (when the appendix to a party’s brief contains nothing other than the opinion and decree of the lower court the Court will look no further than the opinion and the decree to make its decision); Strohecker v. Schumacher & Seiler, Inc., 185 Md. 144, 146-47, 43 A.2d 208, 209 (1945) (“[W]e do not intend to pass the one typewritten copy of the record from member to member of this Court so that each one may hunt up for himself what the appellant is discussing in his brief---[W]e do not intend to permit counsel to impose upon us the burden of work, which should have been done by them.”).
The last sentence of Rule 8-501(c) is of no assistance to the plaintiffs on their Motion for Reconsideration. *192The provision does “not preclude a party from relying” in that party’s brief on the matter omitted from the record extract. The liberalizing provision relating to record extracts in Rule 8—501(c) does not excuse the failure to furnish in the brief references to factual material in support of a party’s argument as required by Rule 8—504(a)(4).1 Nor does the liberalization in Rule 8-501(c) alter the'fundamental rule of appellate practice under which the appellate court has no duty independently to search through the record for error. See State Roads Comm’n v. Halle, 228 Md. 24, 32, 178 A.2d 319, 323 (1962); Van Meter v. State, 30 Md.App. 406, 407-08, 352 A.2d 850, 851-52 (1976); GAI Audio of New York, Inc. v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., Inc., 27 Md.App. 172, 182-83, 340 A.2d 736, 743-44 (1975). Thus, the Court of Special Appeals has appropriately held that a party may lose the right to appeal on an issue by failing to indicate in that party’s brief the location in the record where the alleged error occurred. Mitchell v. State, 51 Md.App. 347, 357-58, 443 A.2d 651, 657, cert. denied, 459 U.S. 915, 103 S.Ct. 227, 74 L.Ed.2d 180 (1982). The same principle applies to the alleged cure of an error.
The second reason for our denial of the Motion for Reconsideration is that, under the instructions of the trial court, the jury could not consider either of the depositions. Indeed, it may have been because of the limiting instruction that plaintiffs did not include reference to those depositions in their brief as appellees. We describe below how the instruction evolved.
On the eleventh trial day, November 24, 1993, after plaintiffs had introduced their case in chief, the defendants were producing evidence in support of their cross-claims. Counsel for the plaintiffs, referring specifically to the anticipated introduction by Porter Hayden Company, Inc. (PH) of excerpts *193from the deposition of Dr. Schepers in support of PH’s cross-claim against Owens-Illinois, Inc. (O-I), pointed out to the court, out of the presence of the jury, that a number of passages designated from the deposition dealt with TLVs. Plaintiffs complained that they had presented their case in chief in reliance on the motion in limine ruling under which TLVs were not an issue, and plaintiffs submitted that injection into the case of TLV evidence “brings a whole new ball game up.... ” The court resolved the matter by saying: “I intend to tell the jury that that evidence is only as to the cross-claim and can only be considered as to the cross-claim; it can’t be considered as to anything else.” Plaintiffs reasserted their objections to the designations. After the jury was brought back into the courtroom, the trial court gave an instruction consistent with what it had indicated it would do. The text of the instruction is set forth in the margin.2 Due to the intervening Thanksgiving holiday the next trial day was Monday, November 29, when excerpts from the two depositions were read to the jury. At that time, and thereafter, any *194defendant adopting one or the other or both depositions as part of that defendant’s case as a cross-claimant so stated to the jury, and the adopting defendant identified to the jury the specific cross-claim defendant against which the evidence was offered.
Under the limiting instruction the jury was not permitted to consider the depositions of Hazard and of Dr. Schepers as evidence bearing on the original claim of the plaintiffs against the defendants. Consequently, the deposition evidence did not render non-prejudicial to the defendants the erroneous ruling on the motion in limine.
For these reasons Appellees’ Motion for Reconsideration is denied.

. In stating the petitioner ACandS's position, the court quoted front U.S. Gypsum Co. v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, 336 Md. 145, 188-89, 647 A.2d 405, 427 (1994), as follows:
“Evidence of a generalized knowledge that asbestos poses a danger to a narrow class of unprotected persons who are exposed during the application or removal of asbestos-containing materials in buildings will not, under the strict requirements for a submissible punitive damages case, support an inference that [defendants] had knowledge of a danger to the much broader class of persons who were merely present in such buildings at other times[.]”
(quoting Kansas City v. Keene Corp., 855 S.W.2d 360, 375 (Mo.1993) (en banc)).

. The majority finds admissible one of the three purchase requisitions, from the Fairfield Shipyard directly to Johns Mansville, that the petitioner Porter Hayden Company, Inc. offered to show that the respondent Payne’s exposure to Johns Mansville products was not necessarily caused by it. 344 Md. 155, 179-181, 686 A.2d 250, 261-262 (1996). I *190find the Court of Special Appeals’ resolution of the issue more persuasive.

. By way of contrast, in ACandS v. Godwin, 340 Md. 334, 667 A.2d 116 (1995), the factual material that formed the basis for the reconsideration had been referred to in the brief entitled, "Brief of Appellees on Consolidated General Issues and On Consolidated Punitive Damage Issues and Brief of Cross-Appellants."

. "THE COURT: ...
"... [W]hen evidence is admitted in particular matters against particular individuals or companies, that evidence may only be considered as to that company and may not be considered for any other purpose.
“I have mentioned that to you before, but I wanted to remention that to you so that there is no crossover of your consideration of evidence against one party against another party.
“Do you understand that?
“THE JURY: Yes.
"THE COURT: Okay. Keep that in mind at all times during the course of the trial.
"At certain times, you have heard that the evidence is being offered against party A, for example.
“Well, that evidence that was admitted against party A can only be considered by you in your deliberations against party A.
“You have heard party A and B, for example, using just those generic designations say, 'we adopt,’ or party B will say ‘we adopt what party A is offering.’
“Then you may consider that evidence in favor of both of those and against only the individuals or corporations that it is being offered against, and not for any other purpose.
“Is that clear?
“THE JURY: Yes.”