Court Opinion

ID: 9749208
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:27:59.670162+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:45.077356
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts:
While I am in full agreement with the opinion of the majority, I feel constrained to add a few, brief observations.
This litigation arose out of a conventional motor vehicle collision, each side accusing the other of inattention and negligence. As the majority notes, the issues present were “singularly uncomplex.” Yet, although the case is routine and unexceptional in every respect, involving largely a factual dispute to be resolved by the fact finder’s assessment of credibility, this Court is asked for the second time to set aside a jury verdict for defendant and to impose the case again on our already overburdened trial courts.
At the outset, the full implications of such a course of action must be considered in context. We do not here deal with a matter unlikely to present itself in the near future, or with one that will not have a significant effect on the very serious problem of trial court *8backlog. A recent study revealed that 92% of the jury cases in Philadelphia County and 86% of such cases in Allegheny County are in trespass. Levin & Woolley, Dispatch and Delay, 9 n. 39 (1961).
It is clear, therefore, that it is in trespass actions, and most especially in personal injury litigation arising out of motor vehicle accidents, that the problem of trial delay is most acute. And, it is also in this area that the legal principles involved are most repetitious and familiar to trial counsel.
In the present case, to permit plaintiff to obtain a second trial, on the ground that the instructions to the jury contained fundamental error, in light of the elementary and routine nature of the principles involved, would do a great injustice to countless numbers of persons who are compelled to endure oppressive delay or to settle claims at a fraction of their value because timely judicial relief was not available. While I would heartily approve of ordering a new trial in any case in which such action would be in the interest of justice, I would find no justice in setting aside the endeavors of all those who participated in the trial below merely because plaintiff’s counsel now discerns some disadvantage, problematical at best, to his client, a disadvantage which he had every opportunity to discern and to seek to have rectified at trial.
The record here discloses that the court, at the completion of its charge, inquired whether counsel objected to the charge as given, or desired any amplification or addition to the instructions. Counsel replied in the negative. In my view, given the elementary nature of the applicable legal principles, such acquiescence by counsel precludes an assertion of error in the charge as grounds for setting aside the verdict. As this Court stated in Segriff v. Johnston, 402 Pa. 109, 113, 166 A. 2d 496, 499 (1960), “a proper administration of justice requires that new trials be *9not granted on errors which counsel had ample opportunity to correct. . . .” The purpose of this rule will never be more fully achieved than by its application to the present case. Had counsel apprised the court of his objection to the charge, by taking a specific exception, any possible prejudice to plaintiff by reason of the court’s instruction on contributory negligence and proximate cause could have been and undoubtedly would have been cured. Since it was entirely possible for counsel, by manifesting his disagreement with the charge, to have prompted curative efforts on the part of the court, thus avoiding the appalling and burdensome waste which retrial engenders, I am able to ascertain no reason for upsetting the verdict of the jury and granting a new trial in this case. To do so would be to reduce the threshold of fundamental error so as to encourage counsel to sit idly, to take his chances with the instructions given at trial, and then, having lost the case, to seek a second opportunity to try his case on the ground that the charge was prejudicial to his client. We should no longer be willing to tolerate such tactics at the expense of our overburdened trial courts and the litigants who are adversely affected by lengthy delays in the vindication of their legal rights.
Accordingly, I fully approve of the action of this Court today in adopting a more realistic approach to the matter of fundamental error. From this point on, it should be clear that, in the absence of a specific exception and a curative effort at trial, we will not allow the assertion of error predicated on instructions involving principles as routine and commonplace as those here involved. So long as the principles involved are ones with which any lawyer of competence must be presumed to be familiar, the failure to take specific exception will preclude the grant of a new trial.
Finally, it should be noted that the present case does not present the appropriate occasion for defining *10what would support the grant of a new trial even in the absence of a specific exception to the charge. Such a definition should, and I trust will, be resolved on a case by case analysis of the particular circumstances and legal principles involved. Thus the approach embodied in today’s decision does not in any way restrict the right of an appellate court, under appropriate circumstances, to set aside a verdict and to grant a new trial because of fundamental error in the court’s instructions. What is sought to be accomplished is that a practice grounded in indifference and resulting in waste be discouraged, and the administration of justice benefited by removing at least one of the causes of the delay which restricts access to our courts.