Court Opinion

ID: 9762078
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:09:50.695787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:29.786846
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Musmanno:
I would grant a new trial in this case for reasons not discussed in the Majority Opinion. The principal dispute at the trial of this lawsuit was whether the plaintiff was struck by the defendant’s car at a regular crossing (7th and Cedar Streets in Allentown) or at a point between crossings. Obviously a motorist is held to a higher degree of care and caution at an established intersection than he is at any place removed from the intersection. It was highly important, therefore, for the Trial Judge in his charge to leave to the jury the uninfluenced determination of the exact spot of the collision. Under no circumstances should he have accepted as a fact that the accident occurred beyond 7th and Cedar Streets. Thus, in my view of the case, it was distinct error for the Trial Court to affirm the defendant’s ninth point for charge which read: “Muffley [defendant] was not bound to anticipate that Mrs. Nyce [plaintiff] would come out suddenly from between parked cars into the pathway of his car between crossings, and if the accident occurred in that fashion, your verdict should be for Muffley.”
The record is barren of testimony that Mrs. Nyce came out suddenly or otherwise from “between parked *114cars.” In this desert of nullity, the Trial Judge dug an oasis of suggestion, and it cannot be excluded that the jury was influenced into believing what did not exist.
The jury returned a verdict for the defendant and in his opinion refusing the motion for a new trial filed by the plaintiff, the Trial Judge sought to justify his affirmance of the defendant’s ninth point: “The statement of law is correct and was simplified by the context of the charge. The assumed facts were supported by competent evidence whose credibility was for the jury and we stressed that it applied only if the jury found that those elements were present in the case. The point does not state that there was testimony that she came out suddenly but the jury had the right to infer that she came out suddenly if they believed defendant who said he had not seen plaintiff in his pathway or known what he had hit.”
The Judge speaks of “assumed facts,” but one cannot assume what has no basis in reality. By assuming what was not testified to, the Judge planted in the jury’s mind an idea which later could grow into an assumed “fact,” and finally bear fruit in an unwarranted verdict. When the Judge said: “Muffley was not bound to anticipate that Mrs. Nyce would come out suddenly from between parked cars,” what possible interpretation could the jury place on that statement other than that there was evidence that Mrs. Nyce came out from between parked cars?
It is a matter of demonstrable reality that persons untrained in the ways of psychological reaction can easily integrate an imagined fact into an accepted situation when the suggested fact is advanced by someone who speaks with authority. In the minds of the jurors the Judge’s instruction could easily take tangible form within the frame of the general picture of the accident as they understood it, and, on the basis of *115the Judge’s authority, they would have no difficulty in visualizing Mrs. Nyce darting between the parked cars with the animation of Eliza crossing the ice.
Trial Judges should be extremely wary about drawing word pictures with crayons taken from the box of sheer speculation, or from the brief cases of one or the other of the battling attorneys. In this connection it might be well to recall that: “ ‘Charges relating to matter not in evidence, or as to which has been excluded, especially if they are as to fundamental facts, should not be given. A point, therefore, is properly refused which, though correctly stating the law, has no particular application to the evidence in the case. Instructions which assume facts contrary to the facts in evidence, are erroneous and should not be given. (6 Std. Pa. Practice, Section 23, Page 130, et seq.) ’ ”
The Trial Judge in this case charged further: “Those are the duties of the parties toward each other, and your findings, whether Mr. Muffley was negligent, you cannot find a verdict against him unless you find that he was negligent. You cannot find a verdict in favor of Mrs. Nyce, and it amounts to the same thing, unless you find that she was free of contributory negligence.” *
This instruction assumes that the plaintiff had an affirmative duty to prove that she was free of contributory negligence. Of course, that is not the law.
I trust I do not seem unduly critical of the able and conscientious Judge in the Court below. I know that an appellate court should not take a trial judge’s charge and run it through a find-meshed sieve to catch every grain of sand of inappropriate expression and every particle of lint of incongruity. I am aware of that, but at the same time the court of review may not avert its *116gaze when it finds on the upper side of the sieve fair-sized pebbles of incorrect statements of the law. The Trial Judge charged here: “Did he [Muffley] hit Mrs. Nyce at the intersection where she, as a pedestrian would have the right of way, or was it a point below the intersection, where a, motorist could not ordinarily expect to find someone crossing the street. Your determination on that point will have a great bearing upon the verdict that you will render.”
The Judge here conveyed the impression that it was quite extraordinary for one to cross a street between intersections, but we know from common knowledge, aside from the many cases which come into the courts, that it is not only not extraordinary for pedestrians to traverse streets between crossings but that it is not illegal to do so. Common prudence, of course, dictates that it is safer to cross at an established intersection, but taking the Twentieth Century as it is, with its emphasis on speed and short cuts, we cannot overlook the fact that foot passengers will cross between intersections — and motorists cannot ignore that this practice is something to be expected in any busy city, as Allentown unquestionably is. In the very recent case of Yurkonis v. Dougherty, 382 Pa. 387, 390, the lower Court charged the jury: “If from all of the testimony, you find that Clarence Yurkonis [the decedent] was negligent in not crossing Lehigh Avenue at a regular intersection, then your verdict must be for the defendant ... if such negligence caused or contributed to the happening of the accident.”
This Court reversed, not only because of the presumption that the decedent had used due care, but because: “One crossing at other than regular intersections is charged with a higher degree of care . . . but it is not in itself negligence to do so. . . The point given to the jury could well have been taken by it to *117mean that the jury could find decedent was negligent per se in ‘not crossing ... at a regular intersection/ and in such case was bound to find for defendant. That it could have led the jury to conclude that decedent was contributorily negligent, where it otherwise would not have so found, cannot be doubted. The court did not ‘in plain language try to make these principles understandable to a jury’; and there being no amplification or qualification it was inaccurate and prejudicial.”
In affirming the defendant’s first point for charge, the Trial Judge here inadvertently used the word “plaintiff” when he meant “defendant”: “Now I am affirming the Plaintiff’s first point for instruction. The mere fact that an accident occurred between an automobile and a pedestrian, and that Mrs. Nyce was injured, does not mean that Mrs. Nyce is entitled to a verdict.”
If this had been the only error in the charge, it would not be of sufficient gravity to vitiate it. Since, however, the Judge in various portions of his charge stated the law and the facts in such a manner as to suggest (unintentionally, of course,) the idea that the plaintiff’s case was indeed a difficult one to prove, the jury could well have concluded from the point just quoted that the plaintiff herself admitted that her case was a weak one indeed.
Without reflecting in any way on the ability and the intention of the Trial Judge to present the case to the jury most impartially, I believe that errors were committed which should entitle the plaintiff to a new trial.

 Italics, mine.