Court Opinion

ID: 9435334
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 00:02:47.979646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:49.979281
License: Public Domain

Justice Ginsburg,
dissenting.
The Court’s opinion in Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Ayers, 538 U. S. 135 (2003), would support this plain and simple instruction: “It is incumbent upon [the plaintiff] to prove that his alleged fear [of cancer] is genuine and serious,” id., at 157. The defense-oriented instructions requested, however, were far more elaborate, compare ante, at 839-840 (per curiam), with App. to Pet. for Cert. 70a-71a, and the trial court rightly refused to give them. Nothing in Ayers required the court to deliver, on its own initiative, a fitting substitute. I would therefore deny the petition for certiorari and dissent from the Court’s summary reversal.