Court Opinion

ID: 9773372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:43:28.389185+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:21.199024
License: Public Domain

HOWELL, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in the judgment only; I dissent from the veiled holding that, on re-trial the State may not introduce any evidence at all concerning the death of David Barker.
Photographs of corpses are, to many persons, gruesome, shocking and revolting. They are by their very nature highly inflammatory to a jury of laymen. For that reason, the rule has been established in wrongful death actions that such photographs are inadmissible unless necessary to establish a disputed fact issue. Where the trial court admits pictures of corpses without a showing of particularized need, reversal has been ordered. St. Lukes Hospital Assn. v. Long, 125 Colo. 25, 240 P.2d 917, 922, 31 A.L.R.2d 1120, 1127 (1952) (hospital malpractice action, child allegedly strangled when his head passed through bed rails; held, although photo of head showing a mark on cheek would have been admissible, photo of entire body including autopsy incision and sutures was improperly admitted); Ryan v. United Parcel Service, 205 F.2d 362, 364 (2d Cir.1953) (wrongful death action; held, error to admit collision scene photo showing decedent’s body hanging out of car door).
There are no Texas cases on the admissibility, in a civil action, of a photo of a corpse, but the Texas rule has been foretold by Heddin v. Delhi Gas Pipeline Co., 522 S.W.2d 886 (Tex.1975) (gas pipeline condemnation case, landowner offered photos of rupture of another pipeline in area as evidence of devaluation on account of public fear of high pressure gas mains; admission held erroneous):
Over strenuous objections, a number of photographs of the carcasses of the cattle and the pets belonging to the landowner in the Pan American case were introduced. Although photographic reproductions can be beneficial to all parties in the trial of a lawsuit, those that are merely calculated to arouse the sympathy, prejudice or passion of the jury and do not serve to illustrate disputed issues or aid the jury in its understanding of the case should not be admitted. ... The photographs of the dead animals ... had no relevance to the disputed issues; they were not calculated to aid the jury in its understanding of the case. Indeed, it must be concluded that they were shown not for the purpose of establishing the dangerousness of the pipeline but rather for their shock value.... Admission of these highly inflammatory and irrelevant photographs was such error as was reasonably calculated to cause and probably did cause the rendition of an improper judgment.
Id. at 889-90. (citations omitted).
There is no reason to hold otherwise in the case at hand. The photos of the corpse of David Barker proved nothing that was not already conceded. His death was a suicide; the means by which he took his life was through a massive overdose of the drug Mitcal which was the centerpiece of appellant’s weight-loss program. If the fact that Barker’s dead hands showed yellow stains was still significant in view of appellant’s direct admissions — a doubtful premise — the pathologist could easily have testified about the stains. It follows that *873pictures of the Barker corpse were of little or no utility to the State except for the purpose of inflaming the jury, a blatant appeal to prejudice.
The judgment of remand is eminently correct. The writer does not disagree with the grounds upon which the majority relies for reversal. However, the majority should further hold that the admission of the photo of the Barker corpse in evidence was also reversible error — harmful reversible error.
The majority has cryptically attempted to telegraph to the trial court an instruction that, upon re-trial no evidence whatever may be admitted pertaining to Barker’s death. The writer cannot accept that such instruction is correct.
The majority quotes from appellant’s weight-loss brochure the unqualified statement that “[t]here have been no fatalities associated with Mitcal.” (at 871). The majority proceeds to hold that Barker’s suicide proves the statement to have been false. The majority concludes that evidence of the Barker suicide was “irrelevant and inadmissible” because Barker could conceivably have committed suicide using aspirin. The holding is a non-sequitur.
We are dealing with promotional literature-advertising material. The suit was brought under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act prohibiting “false, deceptive or misleading conduct.” Tex.Bus. & Comm.Code § 17.46(a) (Vernon 1987). Sales promotion literature such as this is always thoughtfully worded and carefully crafted. The admittedly false statement could have been made true by causing it to read “[t]here have been no fatalities associated with Mitcal when used in recommended dosages."
Upon re-trial, the trier of fact could legitimately conclude that appellant deliberately, as a matter of choice, omitted the emphasized language; that appellant deliberately employed a half-truth being desirous not to raise the reader’s concern with what happens when recommended dosages are exceeded. It could conclude that appellant’s action in inserting this half-truth in the brochure was false, deceptive or misleading conduct. On the other hand, the trier of fact could well conclude, as our majority has concluded, that “evidence of Barker’s suicide is irrelevant.”
The fatal flaw in the majority reasoning is its failure to distinguish between the function of the judge and the function of the jury. In short, the jury should be allowed to know that appellant’s weight-loss brochure was something less than frank, factual and literally true. From that point forward, it should be the prerogative of the jury, as the finder of fact, not the court as the giver of the law, to decide the significance of appellant’s digression from the complete truth.
I dissent from any attempt to instruct the trial court that, upon re-trial, evidence relating to the cause of Barker’s death shall not be admitted.