Court Opinion

ID: 9719380
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:50:17.190291+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:06.678922
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Bell, J.:
With the possible exception of some psychiatric (opinion) testimony in murder cases, opinion evidence in land damage cases is often the most conjectural, unreliable and lowest kind of evidence ever allowed in a Court of justice: Cf. Phillips’s Estate, 299 Pa. 415, 423, 149 A. 719; Snyder’s Estate, 279 Pa. 63, 74-5. 123 A. 663.
To say that a trial Judge or a Court en banc abused its discretion by ordering a remittitur or granting a new trial because a jury’s verdict was supported by some opinion evidence, gives to such opinion evidence a weight and stature which is unjustifiable, and deprives the trial Court of its inalienable power to correct a jury’s errors and its bounden duty to see that justice is rendered even though it may necessitate the repeated grant of a new trial: Elia v. Olszewski, 368 Pa. 578, 84 A. 2d 188; Maloy v. Rosenbaum, 260 Pa. 466, 103 A. 882; Bradican v. Scranton Rwy. Co., 260 Pa. 555, 103 A. 1013; Shaughnessy v. Director General of R.R., 274 Pa. 413, 118 A. 390.
*242I would affirm the order of the Court below which, in its wise discretion, granted a new trial.
Mr. Justice Musmanno joins in this Dissenting Opinion.