Court Opinion

ID: 9592034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:09:42.913426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:13.930624
License: Public Domain

O’Hara, J.
(dissenting). I am in respectful disagreement with Judge McGregor in two particulars.
As to the first, he concluded that the trial judge was in error when he refused to allow plaintiffs’ counsel to cross-examine the defendant with reference to his driving record. Principal reliance is placed upon Sting v Davis, 384 Mich 608 (1971).
In my view this reliance is ill-founded. Sting does not address itself to the precise point upon which the trial judge denied any further examination, namely, the insufficiency of the foundation laid to pursue the line of questioning. I do not read Sting to hold that the mere allegation in the complaint that a defendant was negligent at some given time or place, and the denial thereof in a responsive pleading, permits impeachment of a defendant driver by introduction of violations minor or major of the Motor Vehicle Code. It is one thing to say proof of such past violations are admissible as bearing upon credibility. It is quite another thing to hold decisionally in what manner and to what degree some foundation for impeachment must be laid. I do not believe that the Supreme Court in Sting meant to strip the trial judge of all discretion in the continuing supervision of the examination of a witness. In the instant case the only foundation question asked was:
*645"Q. Would you consider yourself a safe driver on December 20, 1966?” (The date of the accident.)
"A. Yes, I did.”
Thereupon plaintiffs’ counsel sought "to show that he [defendant] is not being truthful when he says he considers himself a safe driver”.
I am hard put to know how the defendant’s driving record could change his own subjective evaluation of himself as a driver. As the trial judge observed to plaintiffs’ counsel,
"See, this question was asked by you, 'Do you consider yourself to be a safe driver?’ He said, 'Yes’. And now you are trying to say that because he’s guilty of speeding or something that this would impeach his testimony.”
If this is not correct, I believe it not improper to add a direct quote from Mr. Justice T. G. Kavanagh’s opinion in Sting, with which I am in agreement, "I am of the opinion that the Michigan rule should be improved”.
I think the trial judge was well within his discretionary control of the conduct of the trial to prohibit further examination on this issue.
As to the sudden emergency situation, the defendant testified that his car struck a patch of glazed ice, different in kind from the rest of the surface of the road, and that this was the "sudden emergency” he encountered. I do not understand defendant’s claim to be that a snow-covered, slippery street in Michigan in December was a sudden emergency.
For some time past there has been a growing trend in our Supreme Court to consider the verdict of the jury in negligence cases to be sacrosanct as *646to issues of fact. In this case, a local jury heard local people give their versions of a most regrettable event. They exonerated the defendant. For all we know at our level of review, they may have so held on the question of proximate cause and not on the issue of negligence.
Assuming, arguendo, that some error may have been committed, I am convinced the whole charge of the court presented the issues fairly. I find no error which I consider reversible. I would affirm the jury verdict.