Court Opinion

ID: 9450737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:56:18.008935+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:26.009277
License: Public Domain

FAHY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The service performed by pre-trial procedure is of unquestionable value. A case arises occasionally, however, in which the latitude granted to the trial judge by Rule 16, Fed.R.Civ.P., to depart from the pre-trial order should be used. The Rule provides that the order controls the subsequent course of the action “unless modified at the trial to prevent manifest injustice.” There is no touchstone by which to determine when “manifest injustice” would be prevented by permitting modification. A case must be judged according to its circumstances. The circumstances which lead me to dissent include the important one that the law in this jurisdiction applicable to the legal obligations of a landlord to a tenant includes our decision in Whetzel v. Jess Fisher Management Co., 108 U.S.App. D.C. 385, 282 F.2d 943 (1960). We there held his obligations embrace those imposed by applicable Housing Regulations. Those urged to apply here were not referred to in the pre-trial order. Nevertheless they are public regulations, and Whetzel v. Fisher is a decision of this court. A question for determination at the trial should have been whether the regulations applied and, if so, whether the injury of the tenant was proximately caused by their violation. In deciding the matter of “manifest injustice,” or, otherwise stated, “manifest justice,” the *744failure of counsel specifically to bring forth this theory of liability until during the trial must be weighed against the possible prejudice to defendant in then permitting departure from the pre-trial order. The defendants could have been given opportunity to meet the case sought to be based on the regulations; but unless plaintiff were permitted to seek reliance upon them he was, of course, “out of court” entirely with respect to them.
Failure to include the regulations in the pre-trial order appears not to have been deliberate. Plaintiff is thus made to suffer from an inadvertence counsel sought to have remedied at the trial. Any possible disadvantage to experienced counsel for defendants, by permitting the requested departure from the pretrial order, could have been obviated by a continuance if counsel so desired. In any event the disadvantage to defendants is more than outweighed, it seems to me, by the disadvantage to plaintiff in unnecessarily limiting consideration of her case to only a part of the law which might be found applicable. Manifest injustice is more likely to occur when the applicable law is precluded from consideration because not referred to in the pre-trial order than when the preclusion is of evidentiary matter which takes the adversary by surprise.1
The position of my brethren on this aspect of the case seems to me inconsistent with the approach of this court to a somewhat similar problem in Morgan v. Garris, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 222, 307 F.2d 179 (1962). And see Meadow Gold Products Co. v. Wright, 108 U.S.App. D.C. 33, 278 F.2d 867 (1960).
The court also gives as a reason for affirmance that the decedent’s own negligence caused the accident. The trial court did not mention this in its direction of a verdict for defendants and it was not advanced by them on the appeal as ground for affirmance. I would not affirm on this ground; for the question of contributory negligence should be initially considered and answered in the District Court.

. I have not sought to solve the problem on the theory, not urged, that the pretrial order might be read to allow the inclusion of the Housing Regulations in evidence without necessity for its amendment. But see, in this connection, Johnson v. Geffen, 111 U.S.App.D.C. 1, 294 F.2d 197 (1960).