Court Opinion

ID: 9674317
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:26:30.688394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.894678
License: Public Domain

*490ON MOTION FOR REHEARING OR TO TRANSFER TO COURT EN BANC
PER CURIAM.
Defendant’s main contention in support of its motion for rehearing or to transfer to the Court en Banc is that the jury could not have believed defendant was not liable if its employee Hall was negligent. Defendant points out plaintiff’s counsel in his brief agreed that the jury “understood that the word ‘defendant’ included its servant Henry Hall” and said “it is inconceivable that the jury believed that somehow the railroad was not liable if Henry Hall was negligent.” However, that is not the decisive issue in this case.
Plaintiff’s contention, that “the failure to mention Henry Hall in Instruction 4” could not be prejudicial, would be relevant if this case had been submitted only on the single claim of negligence of defendant’s employee Hall, in dropping the brake beam on the hammer handle. Then the only question would have been whether the jury would understand that defendant was liable if they believed its employee Hall was negligent and plaintiff’s counsel agreed they would. However, plaintiff also submitted a claim of defendant’s negligence (failure to provide safe methods of work) that had nothing to do with Hall’s conduct thus submitting separate multiple negligent acts in the disjunctive.
Defendant says of its Instruction 4: “it is right out of the M.A.I. book (M.A.I. 29.02(2)).” However, the book says it does not fit this case because the book states such an instruction “is not suitable for conversing multiple negligent acts submitted in the disjunctive”; and the book directs attention to 29.04(5) for the suitable form to use. The trouble with defendant’s contention in this case is not that the jury would be confused about whether defendant would be liable if they believed its employee Hall was negligent but whether they would understand the issues when two such different grounds of negligence were disjunc-tively submitted without each being specifically conversed as M.A.I. 29.04 requires. The trial court considered this failure to comply with M.A.I. directions to be prejudicial error and we agree that this is a reasonable conclusion.
The motion for rehearing or to transfer to the Court en Banc is overruled.