Court Opinion

ID: 9473678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:36:38.030518+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:40.729333
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring specially in which CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, joins:
I concur in the result.
It would have been perfectly proper for evidence of the intoxication of Cremeens to have been excluded after the admission of liability, had Cremeens not been proffered as a witness. It was inherently unfair, however, to permit him to testify as to the circumstances of the collision in an attempt to minimize its force without being subject to cross-examination about his drunken condition so that the jury would understand that at the time of the collision his powers of observation and recollection were impaired. That unfairness, together with inappropriate comments by defense counsel, warrants the direction of a new trial.
I believe, however, that the discussion of the question of proximate causation is largely inappropriate.
The plaintiff offered sufficient evidence to warrant an inference by the jury that the impact of the collision caused his ruptured disc, but many things, great and small, can cause the rupture of a vertebral disc. It can result from the kind of thing that many of us do routinely with some frequency. Quite apart from Cole’s much earlier back strain, the question of causation was a typical one for submission to a jury.
On retrial, the plaintiff’s lawyer may stress and emphasize the strength of the *336plaintiffs case on that factual question, but I think it inappropriate for this appellate court to notice it and, in the process, to disparage the strength of the defendant's case on the same controverted question of fact.