Court Opinion

ID: 9748065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 15:50:45.913278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:31.190096
License: Public Domain

MONTGOMERY, Judge,
dissenting:
I must respectfully dissent. I believe that the lower court committed reversible error when it informed the jury that the Defendant, Donald Lippy, had reached a settlement with the Plaintiff. I find significant merit in the Appellant’s contention that the jury may have unfairly considered that the Appellant had received all of the damages to which she was entitled in arriving at her settlement with Mr. Lippy.
The Act of July 9, 1976, P.L. 586, No. 142, § 2, 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 6141, recited in the Majority Opinion, is clear in declaring that no evidence of any settlement or payment should be admitted into evidence in a trial such as the one which took place in the instant case. I believe that the legislative rationale for that statute was that a jury, upon learning of a settlement, could decide to reduce or eliminate any award to an otherwise eligible plaintiff based upon the conclusion that the plaintiff had already received a recovery to the extent that he or she was entitled to or satisfied with in the settlement which had been reached. The jurors could conclude that to award further damages would create a windfall. Moreover, since the jury specifically found Mr. Lippy not to have been negligent in this case, it is reasonable to speculate that the jury members could have reached the conclusion that the Plaintiff had received some monies from that defendant to which she was not entitled, so that the jury would therefore think it fair to deny her any recovery from any other party, against whom an award might otherwise have been made. There is simply no way to determine whether or not such prejudicial considerations resulted from the disclosure of settlement to the jury in the instant case.
*24I believe that the manifest violation of the statute created the clear potential of serious and prejudicial error in the instant case and I therefore feel that the Appellant is entitled to a new trial at which any evidence of settlement would be excluded.