Court Opinion

ID: 9530443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:59:52.954044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:07.029854
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, dissenting: In 1954 the Illinois Judicial Conference conducted a study which disclosed that during the preceding 25-year period 38% of the reversals by the reviewing courts of Illinois resulted in whole or in part from errors in instructions. (Foreword to Illinois Pattern Jury Ins truetions, Civil, at xi (1961).) That shocking fact prompted the unamimous request in 1955 by that body to this court for assistance in solving the problem. This court responded by appointing a committee of distinguished judges, law professors and trial attorneys known as the Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions. The dedicated members of that committee worked at least two days per month, except summers, for five years to accomplish their objective: the drafting of conversational, understandable, unslanted and accurate jury instructions for use in civil cases. Their work product was filed with this court in late 1960 and published in 1961 as Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions — Civil, more commonly known as IPI Civil. It has received national acclaim. (IPI Civil at vi (1961) & 7 (Supp. 1965).) Our court responded to the publication of IPI by adopting Rule 25 — 1, the predecessor of Rule 239. Both Rule 25 — 1(a) and Rule 239(a) require the use of IPI instructions unless the trial judge determines they do not accurately state the law. If no IPI instruction exists on a subject upon which the judge believes the jury should be instructed, “the instruction given on that subject should be simple, brief, impartial, and free from argument.” (58 Ill. 2d R. 239(a).) Herbolsheimer v. Herbolsheimer (1977), 46 Ill. App. 3d 563, and Seibert v. Grana (1968), 102 Ill. App. 2d 283, are typical of the reviewing court decisions implementing the emphasis placed upon the use of IPI instructions. The trial judge considered adequate, and gave, the following IPI instruction: “If you decide for the plaintiff on the question of liability, you must then fix the amount of money which will reasonably and fairly compensate him for any of the following elements of damage proved by the evidence to have resulted from the negligence of the defendant: 1. The nature, extent and duration of the injury. 2. The aggravation of any pre-existing ailment or condition. 3. The disability resulting from the injury. 4. The pain and suffering experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future as a result of the injuries. 5. The reasonable expense of necessary medical care, treatment, and services received. 6. The value of earnings lost and the present cash value of the earnings reasonably certain to be lost in the future. Whether any of these elements of damages has been proved by the evidence is for you to determine.” (IPI Civil Nos. 30.01, 30.02, 30.03, 30.04, 30.05, 30.06, 30.07.) This instruction plainly tells the jury that they are “to fix the amount of money which will reasonably and fairly compensate him [plaintiff] for *** 2. The aggravation of any pre-existing ailment or condition.” In view of that mandate, the majority’s conclusion that the IPI instruction was inadequate because element (3) of damages “makes no reference to the injuries resulting from the aggravation of a preexisting ailment or condition and can be construed to limit damages to the disability resulting from those injuries included in element (1)” (76 Ill. 2d at 455-56) seems to me quite amazing. The instruction offered by plaintiff, the refusal of which the majority now holds constituted reversible error, was as follows: “If you find that the defendant was negligent and that its negligence was a proximate cause of injury to and disability of the plaintiff, you should then find for the plaintiff and his right to recover damages for such injuries and disability is not barred or to be limited in any way by the fact, if you find it to be a fact, that the plaintiff’s injury and disability resulted from an aggravation of a pre-existing condition by the occurrence in question nor by reason of the fact, if you find it to be a fact, that the plaintiff because of a pre-existing physical condition was more susceptible to injury than other persons might have been.” That instruction is a composite of the three instructions held to have been improperly refused in Pozzie v. Mike Smith, Inc. (1975), 33 Ill. App. 3d 343. Pozzie is the sole authority cited by the majority for its holding here, and that case held only that one of the three refused instructions should have been given. Too, it is far from clear that the Pozzie court would have remanded on that ground alone. The opinion in that case holds a new trial is required because of an improper reference by defense counsel to an earlier workmen’s compensation recovery for a different injury, and the instructions were discussed in order to guide the trial judge on the retrial. As I read the majority opinion here, it concedes the argumentative nature of plaintiff’s refused instruction, and the propriety of the court’s refusal to give it. It then, however, awards plaintiff a new trial because, apparently, the trial judge did not afford plaintiff an opportunity to “modify” the concededly improper instruction, despite the absence of any indication that plaintiff ever requested such opportunity. Those of us who served as trial judges in pre-IPI days recall what a difficult task it was to sort out, from the mass of repetitive, slanted, verbose instructions frequently tendered by opposing counsel, those which might be thought to instruct the jury with some semblance of accuracy and fairness, or, sua sponte, to prepare others which would do so. That task was greatly simplified with the advent of IPI. The instruction tendered by plaintiff in this case, however, is reminiscent of the pre-IPI days when a prevalent vice consisted of the practice of some attorneys who would mold to their current desires, and incorporate in the form of jury instructions, statements taken out of context from opinions of this court or the appellate court. Those instructions would then be tendered to the trial judge who, with little or no time for research or reflection, decided whether to give or refuse them. As earlier noted, that procedure produced a substantial amount of error, which it was the intent of IPI and our Rule 239 to eliminate — an intent which, it seems to me, the majority opinion now frustrates. Reference to the policies pursued by the committee during its labors is apposite here, for the trial judge, in refusing plaintiff’s composite instruction, indicated its content was more appropriately emphasized by plaintiff’s counsel in his argument to the jury. In the foreword to IPI Civil, second edition, the committee describes the criteria underlying those policies: “First, the Committee has been opposed to negative instructions, that is, instructions which tell the jury to not do something. Second, the Committee has not recommended instructions which single out a particular item of evidence for comment, even where there is judicial authority for the instruction. Third, the Committee has been reluctant to recommend instructions that would be appropriate only in an exceptional case and are likely to be sources of error. Fourth, and perhaps most important, the Committee has opposed over particularizing. It has preferred to rely upon one instruction which is general in nature and has avoided creating a number of instructions on a subject which is adequately covered by the single general instruction. Underlying all these considerations has been a major policy. We have viewed the problem of communicating law to the jury as one best handled by a partnership between court and trial counsel rather than by the court alone. The Court will in understandable language fairly state the law, permitting counsel on each side to supply adversary emphasis, rather than try to neutralize partisan instructions, sounding first like plaintiff’s counsel and then in the next sentence like defense counsel. In brief, on many occasions when the Committee has rejected an instruction, it has felt not so much that the point ought not be told to the jury, but rather that it should be told to the jury by counsel rather than by the Court.” Foreword to IPI Civil at vi-vii (2d ed. 1971). The court’s opinion does not even indicate the verdict to be inadequate, which, if it were, might be cause for concern as to the adequacy of the instructions. I agree that the verdict is not inadequate, although I would also agree that a somewhat higher verdict would not have been excessive in view of the conflicting testimony. But the matter of resolving contradictory testimony as to damages is a function for which we traditionally say juries are peculiarly well suited. (Pedrick v. Peoria & Eastern R.R. Co. (1967), 37 Ill. 2d 494; Lindroth v. Walgreen Co. (1950), 407 Ill. 121; Barbour v. Chicago Transit Authority (1976), 41 Ill. App. 3d 888, 894; Reed v. Knol (1972), 7 Ill. App. 3d 163, 166.) The jury here had before it a plaintiff with a congenitally weak back who had been involved in a number of industrial and nonindustrial accidents during preceding years, none of which were revealed by him to Dr. Scuderi or Dr. Sahgal; he complained of pain for which his own medical experts could find no objective support, nor did they find any objective cause for his limping as he did; and in Dr. Sahgal’s opinion plaintiff was “employable” and had “an excellent vocational potential.” The jurors had been instructed to “reasonably and fairly compensate” plaintiff for the “aggravation of any pre-existing ailment or condition,” and whether and to what extent that aggravation had occurred was for them to decide. In my opinion the trial judge properly held the given IPI instruction was adequate. In any event, the additional instruction tendered by plaintiff was neither simple, impartial nor free from argument as Rule 239 requires, and it was properly refused. It is, in my judgment, neither necessary nor fair to reverse this trial judge for failing to modify and then give a refused instruction he was never requested to change. The court’s action in doing so seems to me a nullification of the significant benefits from IPI, and a substantial step backward to the undesirable practices of pre-IPI days. I would reverse the judgment of the appellate court and affirm the judgment of the trial court.