Court Opinion

ID: 9697535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:20:13.185099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:33.482252
License: Public Domain

REILLY, Senior Judge,
dissenting:
In my opinion, two rulings of the trial court were not only erroneous, but so prejudicial to the defense, that I would set aside the verdicts for damages and order a new trial.
I.
The most serious error was the refusal of the court to overrule an objection to a question by plaintiffs counsel designed to draw the jury’s attention to some misconduct by defendant Wigfall. This elicited the admission that he had been discharged by Woodward & Lothrop from his job as security officer for “misappropriation of funds.” This testimony — clearly inadmissible as evidence of an unrelated crime for which the witness had never been convicted — was allowed to remain in the record and was utilized repeatedly by plaintiff throughout the rest of the trial to smear the entire case put on by the defense. As plaintiff’s own claim rested on testimony, not only uncorroborated but incredible on its face, it is difficult to believe that a jury would have returned a verdict in his favor had not this prejudicial evidence been admitted. In reaching a contrary conclusion, my colleagues have apparently overlooked this aspect of this case.
Just before Wigfall was called to the stand, plaintiff Hillary, as the first witness in the trial, had given the jury his account of what had happened to him when he entered the store one June evening at closing time. Describing himself as a regular customer at this downtown retail establishment, who had purchased some items of clothing there that very morning, plaintiff testified that in revisiting the store that evening, he had passed the doors and stepped only ten feet inside when he was told by a cashier that the store was closing.
According to his testimony, he “immediately started to turn around and go back out,” but was grabbed by Sellers, another security officer, who turned him around, refused his request to let him go out the door, and insisted that he come with him. Plaintiff stated he immediately complied, but as they were walking together to the security office, Sellers punched him in the eye, called for assistance to arrest plaintiff, who was then “assaulted and battered further and ... immediately wrestled to the floor.” Identifying Wigfall as one of the men responding to Sellers’ call for help, plaintiff then recalled that when they could not contain him, they attempted to knock him unconscious by punching him and finally wrestled him to the floor, where they handcuffed him and removed two hundred dollars from his pockets.
In short, plaintiff portrayed himself as the victim of a totally unprovoked assault by an agent of a department store — conspicuous for its efforts to retain the good will of customers who still do their shopping in the fading downtown retail area. To avoid undue offense to late arriving customers (as well perhaps as to forestall potential shoplifters), it was the practice at Woodward & Lothrop’s to assign a security officer after the closing bell is sounded to stand near the unlocked doors to warn tardy entrants that the store had closed and to see to it that they complied with requests to leave. It is scarcely conceivable that a customer immediately responding to such a request would be detained or physically attacked by any security officer in the absence of some personal animosity between them. There is not the slightest suggestion in this case that Sellers, the asserted assailant here, had ever seen plaintiff before. Hence, it is most unlikely that any reasonable jury would have believed Hillary’s version of what had happened unless his testimony were allowed to stand uncon-tradicted.
*1152Before trial began, however, plaintiff's counsel was aware that his client’s testimony would be contradicted. He had already taken the depositions of two key defense witnesses, Sellers and Arlene Marshal (a sales clerk-cashier), and learned that they would testify that Sellers was standing inside the doors after the closing bell had rung, with one side of the doors remaining unlocked in order to provide an exit for departing customers and shop personnel. As Sellers was chatting with Miss Marshal, plaintiff entered the store apparently dazed and mumbling to himself. Sellers informed him that the store had closed, but the stranger proceeded past the pair into the interior of the store. The security officer then called after him, repeating his announcement and requesting that he leave. When plaintiff ignored these requests, Sellers followed him and touched his arm in an attempt to gain his attention. Plaintiff swung at him and a fight broke out. Miss Marshal, seeing the scuffle, went back to the door and summoned Wigfall, who was on duty at the main store across the street, to come to the rescue. By the time Wigfall arrived, Sellers and plaintiff were on the floor wrestling. The two guards eventually were able to subdue plaintiff, handcuff him, and carry him to the security office.
Confronted with the prospect of this testimony, plaintiffs counsel adopted the strategy of discrediting the character of the defendants in the eyes of the jury, even before any testimony concerning the Hillary incident was presented by the defense. As part of this strategy, he called to the stand Wigfall, who was not a witness to the crucial events of the case — the issue of whether Hillary’s arrest was triggered by his own misconduct in refusing to leave and assaulting the guard who insisted on his departure — and proceeded to interrogate him as to why he had been discharged from his employment. As Wigfall was Sellers’ superior officer, he obviously hoped by painting Wigfall as a villain and Sellers as an accomplice, to persuade the jury that plaintiff was an innocent victim of a larcenous plot.
Since Wigfall was an adverse party, plaintiff, under the applicable rule of the Superior Court,1 was indeed vested with considerable latitude in his examination of this witness, including the right to put leading and even hostile questions to him. But counsel’s election to call Wigfall as his own witness, gave him no greater rights than he would have enjoyed on cross-examination had he waited for the defense to call him, for even a cross-examiner is precluded from questioning a witness on irrelevant issues or on matters beyond the scope of his direct testimony, to say nothing of interrogation on such subjects as the commission of other crimes or even misconduct unrelated to the evidence in the particular case.
Bearing in mind these limitations, it seems to me that there were several things wrong with the procedure adopted by the trial court after Wigfall had been sworn and had stated that he was no longer a Woodward & Lothrop employee:
(1) As a motion for an ad limine ruling was pending, the court, once reminded by counsel of this posture of the motion and engaging in a short bench colloquy, should have heard in camera all testimony concerning the termination of defendant Wig-fall’s employment as a guard before ruling on its admissibility. By permitting the jury to listen to the inquiry on an issue reserved solely for judicial determination, the court, even if it had ultimately ruled certain questions improper, allowed plaintiff’s counsel to implant in the minds of the jurors the impression that either the corporate defendant or the individual defendants were trying to hide something.
(2) The court committed error by tacitly agreeing that plaintiff was entitled to ascertain whether Woodward & Lothrop had removed Wigfall from its guard force because it had concluded from its own investigation that his treatment of Hillary was improper. If that were indeed the purpose of the question, all that it would have proved was that the employer had taken corrective action as a precaution *1153against the future occurrence of such incidents. Under the common law of this jurisdiction, as well as the federal rules, see Fed.R.Evid. 407, evidence of such remedial measures to prove fault is not admissible. Avery v. S. Kann Sons, Co., 67 App.D.C. 217, 218-19, 91 F.2d 248, 249-50 (1937); Altemus v. Talmage, 61 App.D.C. 148, 152, 58 F.2d 874, 878, cert. denied, 287 U.S. 614, 53 S.Ct. 16, 77 L.Ed. 533 (1932). See also Columbia & Puget Sound R.R. Co. v. Hawthorne, 144 U.S. 202, 207, 12 S.Ct. 591, 593, 36 L.Ed. 405 (1892) (Supreme Court explained that this kind of evidence should not be admitted for “it is calculated to distract the minds of the jury from the real issue, and to create a prejudice against the defendant”).
(3) But even assuming, arguendo, the asserted ground for this line of questioning was to bring out relevant evidence, it soon became plain that there was no evidence that Wigfall’s removal from his job had anything to do with the Hillary arrest. Wigfall testified that he was terminated on November 15,1988, and when asked if such termination was the result of the Hillary incident, he answered “no.” Both court and counsel must have known that this answer was truthful. If Wigfall was still on the payroll for more than two years after the Hillary incident — and almost two years after the law suit commenced — his discharge could scarcely have been due to employer dissatisfaction with his conduct in a matter so remote in time.
Yet counsel persisted in asking the precise reason for the discharge of the witness. In my view, the court should have sustained the objection to this question, for it was obvious that counsel ahd no reason for propounding it except in the hope of bringing to the jury’s attention some conduct discreditable to Wigfall. I respectfully disagree with the majority opinion’s comment that Hillary’s counsel was acting in good faith in “pursuing a line of inquiry to link Wigfall’s firing to his actions in regard to Hillary.” At this point in the trial, any notion of such linkage had already been dispelled.
It may be true that despite his extensive pretrial investigation, counsel did not expect the exact answer Wigfall gave to his question. An employer may have all sorts of reasons for firing a long term employee. Some of them, like chronic absenteeism, rudeness to customers or fellow employees, or failure to follow instructions, do not reflect adversely on a person’s reputation or character, and if Wigfall had answered that some relatively innocuous conduct of the sort had cost him his job, counsel would have drawn a blank. But if he could have shown the jury that in Wigfall's case, the reason for this discharge was falsifying records, drunkenness on duty, physical harassment of others, dishonesty, or some other kind of flagrant misbehavior, he would have struck pay dirt. And this is precisely what counsel accomplished by asking his question and what the trial court could have prevented had it confined counsel to voir dire examination of Wigfall outside the presence of the jury. Consequently, I do not share my colleagues’ view that Wigfall’s answer “occurred as an apparent surprise to everyone,” or that appellants might have cured its potential for prejudice by moving to strike. As the court had just overruled his objection to the question, counsel might well have concluded that at this point in the trial, the court was unlikely to repent its ruling.
In rejecting appellant’s argument that Wigfall’s damaging answer — an admission of the crime of embezzlement — was inadmissible under D.C.Code § 14-305(b)(l) (1989), the majority opinion is inconsistent with controlling precedent. This subsection of the code requires trial courts, for the purpose of attacking the credibility of a witness, to admit evidence of convictions for felonies or offenses involving “dishonesty or false statement.” No one would argue that a conviction for misappropriation of employer funds does not fall into this second category, had Wigfall been convicted of this offense, which, of course, he never was. The majority opinion seems to hold that the absence of any conviction is immaterial because, inter alia, under the Federal Rules of Evidence, a witness may be impeached with acts not resulting in *1154conviction if such acts are “clearly probative of truthfulness or untruthfulness,” Fed.R.Evid. 608(b), and that federal courts have held that conduct amounting to embezzlement satisfies the condition.
It has indeed been argued in the past that by mandating the admission of convictions for certain kinds of crimes, § 14-305(b)(1), supra, does not deprive Superior Court judges from exercising discretion, as federal judges do, to admit evidence of other crimes which bear on veracity even though there has been no conviction. In a leading casé, however, which I had always supposed was binding upon us, our court rejected this argument, holding that crimes for which no sentence had as yet been imposed could not be offered in evidence as convictions, even if a jury had returned a guilty verdict. Langley v. United States, 515 A.2d 729 (D.C.1986). In that opinion, our court deemed irrelevant federal holdings to the contrary, pointing out that the difference in wording between Fed.R.Evid. 609, which governs federal court administration and § 14-305, applying to the Superior Court. Accordingly, the majority opinion’s reliance upon another federal rule, Fed.R.Evid. 608(b), for holding that the trial court may admit evidence of even an uncharged offense, cannot be reconciled with the Langley decision.
Equally at odds with Langley is the majority’s assumption that Sherer v. United States, 470 A.2d 732, 738 (D.C.1983) supports the proposition that there is a well recognized exception to the rule that a witness may not be cross-examined on a prior bad act not resulting in a criminal conviction “where: (1) the examiner has a factual predicate for such question, and (2) the bad act ‘bears directly upon the veracity of the witness with respect to the issues involved at trial.’ ” (Citations omitted.) In Sherer, the quoted rule was merely dictum, for its final holding was that it was not error for the trial judge to exclude evidence that the government’s key witness had perjured himself in previous cases when he had also testified against an accomplice who was being prosecuted. A similar attempt to explore a complaining witness’ history of lodging false accusations of sexual assault was also ruled out of order in Roundtree v. United States, 581 A.2d 315 (D.C.1990), a case also cited in the majority opinion.
It appears from the text of the Sherer opinion, that the author merely adverted to a rule quoted, but also not applied, in United States v. Akers, 374 A.2d 874, 878 (D.C.1977), which actually had its origin in a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for this circuit, Kitchen v. United States, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 277, 221 F.2d 832 (1955). As that opinion was handed down some fifteen years before Congress enacted § 14-305, it throws no light upon how that statute should be construed — the principal evidentiary issue in this case.2
In sustaining objections to proffered evidence of perjury in similar criminal prosecutions, the authors of the Sherer and Roundtree opinions, supra, pointed out the potential for prejudice if such evidence was introduced in the jury’s presence. Yet, impeachment on the ground of previous perjury would certainly be much more “probative of truthfulness as untruthfulness” than an act of embezzlement. We are told nevertheless that Wigfall’s admission bore directly upon his veracity with respect to the issues at trial, in particular, his defense that he had done no more than subdue an unruly customer who refused to leave the store. This observation ignores the fact that at the time this damaging answer was elicited, the witness had advanced no defense whatsoever concerning his own conduct in the Hillary encounter, as the only questions put to him were directed at subsequent actions by his employer.3 Thus, he *1155had testified to nothing at that point which would justify impeaching his credibility. Accordingly, to hold that the credibility of an adverse party may be impeached because of anticipated testimony would seem to enlarge the right of impeachment to unprecedented lengths. If such tactics were proper, it would mean that in every law suit where the result could turn on the resolution of conflicting testimony, e.g., an action to recover damages in an automobile case, the plaintiff could begin the trial by calling the defendant to the stand and asking him whether he had ever issued a check against an overdrawn account or had ever bought cocaine.4
Wholly aside from any possible relevance of Wigfall’s answer to the veracity of his testimony, however, plaintiff’s counsel was not content to treat his answer as something impairing his credibility, but continually reminded the jury that Wigfall was guilty of thievery. On the very next day, (the trial lasted only three days) when Sellers testified that the tape of a camera in the security office would have exposed any failure on the part of security personnel to have returned Hillary’s money to him, counsel sarcastically asked whether the person responsible for reviewing the tapes “was the same guy who turned in Mr. Wigfall?” A few minutes later when Wig-fall was on the stand and counsel was about to cross-examine him on the money plaintiff asserted had not been returned to him, he prefaced his interrogation by “Now Woodward & Lothrop fired you did it not?”
Although an objection to this question was sustained, its obvious purpose was to suggest to the jury that if Wigfall had misappropriated funds from his employer at some later time, he probably diverted to himself on this occasion most of the money found in plaintiff’s pockets.
Finally, counsel drove home his point that Wigfall was such an evil character that his client’s account of an unprovoked detention and a brutal beating was indeed credible by arguing to the jury, after a disparaging and misleading description of Sellers’ testimony:
Mr. Wigfall was his supervisor. We are talking about credibility. Mr. Wigfall who was hired by Woodward & Lothrop to protect its property from deprivation was fired from Woodward & Lothrop. For what? He said it himself. He took some money from Woodies. But that’s the same man that arrested this man for simply walking into the store. And he was just doing his job.
(Emphasis added.)
Not only was this argument a prejudicial misuse of the Wigfall admission, but a blatant distortion of even his own client’s account of the incident. According to Hillary, he had already been arrested by Sellers, although he was turning to leave the store, and did not resist arrest until Sellers suddenly punched him. Thus, the allegation that Wigfall was the man who arrested Hillary “for simply walking into the store” was a deliberate attempt to mislead the jury.5
*1156It is not the function of an appellate court to set aside a jury verdict merely because the weight of the evidence points to another result, but where evidence was erroneously admitted, unless the reviewing court can say with some assurance that the verdict was not substantially swayed by error, such error cannot be deemed harmless. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-65, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1247-48, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). In view of the inherent weakness of plaintiff’s case, I do not see how we can hold that the judgment challenged here was not “substantially swayed by error.” 6
It is also my opinion that if this had been a criminal case, we would have deemed the tactics of plaintiff's counsel as amounting to prosecutorial misconduct, serious enough to require setting aside a guilty verdict. Lewis v. United States, 541 A.2d 145 (D.C.1988); Jones v. United States, 512 A.2d 253, 258 (D.C.1986).
Granted that this was a civil action rather than a criminal prosecution, I see no reason for not applying these standards in a case where the defendants were accused of intentional criminal behavior — assault, battery, and larceny — warranting the imposition of punitive damages. We were recently reminded by the Supreme Court that tactics of a plaintiff’s trial lawyer, which in the context of a criminal proceeding would have been prosecutorial misconduct, could be grounds for reversing a judgment for damages. Edmundson v. Leesville Concrete Co., — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 114 L.Ed.2d 660 (1991).
II.
As the majority opinion concedes, Hillary alleged no injury in his claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that could not fully be compensated by recovery on his common law tort claims, it would seem to follow that the trial court erred in submitting two verdict forms, but failing to instruct the jury that if it awarded compensatory damages on the first form, it should deny compensatory damages for the alleged violation of constitutional rights. In this context, there is a real possibility that the jury’s determination that plaintiff was entitled to $845 for his tort claims, and $40,000 under § 1983 conferred on plaintiff either a double recovery or the very type of award held improper by the Supreme Court in Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1977), and in Memphis Community School District v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299, 310, 106 S.Ct. 2537, 2544, 91 L.Ed.2d 249 (1986), which overturned a verdict for “damages based on the abstract ‘value’ or ‘importance’ of constitutional rights.”
It is fundamental law that there can be only one recovery for a single injury. Therefore, a plaintiff cannot split his cause of action by seeking compensation for the same injury on two different legal grounds.
I cannot assume that simply because the jury granted a sum equivalent to Hillary’s medical expenses and money loss on the common law tort claim, that the award under § 1983 was not composed of imper*1157missible components. Unlike the majority, my misgivings over the decision to submit separate verdict forms on damages are not allayed by the result, where in the absence of guiding instructions, the jury arrived at a verdict which causes us to speculate on exactly what factors of compensation the seemingly exorbitant sum of $40,000 represented. On this issue alone a remand for a new trial is in order. See Stachura, supra, 477 U.S. at 312, 106 S.Ct. at 2546, citing Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U.S. 247, 256 n. 12, 101 S.Ct. 2748, 2754 n. 12, 69 L.Ed.2d 616 (1981).

. Super.Ct.Civ.R. 43(b).

. Even if some lingering deference should be accorded the Kitchen-Sherer formulation of the conditions under which evidence of prior bad acts may be admitted, such rule plainly did not justify the disputed ruling here. The majority opinion concedes that plaintiffs counsel had no factual predicate for his question. In other words, the first condition laid down by Kitchen did not exist in the case before us.

. It should also be noted that the description of Wigfall’s ultimate or anticipated defense is not altogether accurate. Wigfall, not being in the building when the plaintiff entered and was told the store had closed, was in no position to *1155testify on the issue of whether or not Hillary refused to leave. Even Hillary conceded that Wigfall was not at the scene when Sellers arrested him.

. Until now this court has never countenanced such questioning. See, e.g., Ford v. United States, 549 A.2d 1124, 1125-26 (D.C.1988); Meaders v. United States, 519 A.2d 1248, 1253-54 (D.C.1986); Lee v. United States, 454 A.2d 770, 775 (D.C.1982), cert. denied McIlwain v. United States, 464 U.S. 972, 104 S.Ct. 409, 78 L.Ed.2d 349 (1984); McBride v. United States, 441 A.2d 644, 650-52 (D.C.1982); Rogers v. United States, 419 A.2d 977, 981 (D.C.1980).

. This was not the only time in his summation that counsel was guiljjy of distorting even the testimony he had offered. Responding to closing argument by the defense, he told the jury it was
kind of scary because it could happen to anybody. You could take off your jacket and put on some tom jeans and walk into Woodward & Lothrop and it could happen to you.... Why should this ever happen in the District of Columbia? That a young black guy with tom clothes goes into Woodward & Lothrop and gets beat up. Why does that happen? That’s the case.
Thus, counsel was trying to get the jury to believe that the prime cause for the assault was that the victim was singled out by guard personnel because his tattered clothing indicated he was a disreputable person who had entered the store for no good reason. But counsel had already foreclosed plaintiff from advancing any *1156such theory by testimony he had himself brought out. During his direct examination of Hillary, he had exhibited two items of torn clothing to his client, whereupon that witness identified them as a shirt and pants ripped and torn by the guards in their effort to subdue him. The witness said nothing to indicate that his attire was not in good order before the scuffle occurred.

. The concluding paragraph of Langley v. United States, supra, 515 A.2d at 735, should have considerable bearing on our disposition of the instant case.
Impeachment with prior convictions can be devastating to the party who calls the witness, to a point that some defendants, like appellant, may elect not to testify because of the anticipated impact of such impeachment on the jury. Such "other crimes” evidence inevitably implies legally irrelevant criminal propensity, whatever limiting instruction the court gives to confine the jury’s consideration to impeachment. Accordingly, because the legislature has not granted the trial court flexibility to regulate this form of impeachment, we do not believe this court should be influenced by cases under federal Rule 609 to modify the traditional understanding of what a “conviction” for impeachment purposes means in this jurisdiction, absent a showing (and there is none) that a verdict is tantamount to a judgment and sentence.
Id. (footnote omitted).