Court Opinion

ID: 9632454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 11:15:14.146791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:16.260777
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. In my opinion the trial court abused its discretion in granting the defendant a new trial. I think that she did not as a mattter of law exercise reasonable diligence before the first trial to discover and produce the new evidence which was discovered subsequent to the first trial and upon which she relied in her motion for a new trial. I readily concede that trial courts have wide discretion in *129granting and refusing to grant new trials, but their discretion is not without bounds. For the reasons which I will hereafter point out, it is clear that the court below went beyond those limits.
As to the efforts of the defendant prior to the first trial to uncover information regarding the former activities of the plaintiff, the following testimony was adduced:
The defendant testified that she had been informed by a friend of hers that the plaintiff had “come from a house of prostitution”, but her informant did not know where the house of prostitution was located; that the defendant knew the plaintiff had lived in Tooele, Utah, her present residence, for about ten to fifteen years, and that the house of prostitution referred to was not in Tooele; that the plaintiff on one occasion had told her that she had once lived near Las Vegas, Nevada, and that she had met her husband there and that she was in that city in the spring of 1926; that both the defendant and her husband had made numerous inquiries in and around Tooele to ascertain information as to the plaintiff’s former residences and her former activities, but there efforts proved fruitless.
The defendant’s husband testified that the plaintiff had remarked in his presence about three or four years ago that she had once lived and was married in Las Vegas; that after the plaintiff commenced her action against the defendant, he wrote the police department in Las Vegas to ascertain whether there was any record there of the plaintiff, but he did not receive a reply; that he thereafter telephoned the Las Vegas police department requesting that they search their records for any reference to the plaintiff, but they again failed to respond to his request; and that it was not until the evening after the first trial that a neighbor of the plaintiff, who he had previously talked to about the plaintiff, volunteered information which furnished the lead to discovering evidence of the plaintiff’s employment in Ely, Nevada, as a dance hall girl and upon which evidence the defendant relied in her motion for a new trial.
*130Counsel for the defendant testified that after the plaintiff commenced her suit, he had only indefinite rumors as to the plaintiff’s former activities; that he requested his client to make investigations as to the rumors; that he was unable to obtain any concrete information except that the plaintiff had formerly lived somewhere in the state of Nevada; that he did not believe the alleged slanderous statement to be true; that because of his lack of evidence, his main defense at the first trial was that the plaintiff had not been seriously damaged by the statement; that he did not take the deposition of the plaintiff or serve interrogatories upon her in an effort to determine her former places of residences or activities in Nevada.
Rule 59(a) (4), U. R. C. P., empowering trial courts to grant new trials upon the ground of newly discovered evidence, restricts that power to cases where the newly discovered evidence
“could not, with reasonable diligence, have [been] discovered and produced at the trial.”
Courts have no right to grant new trials on the ground of newly discovered evidence without “reasonable diligence” being proved. It cannot be presumed nor should that requirement be treated lightly. As to what constitutes “reasonable diligence” no definite answer can, of course, be given. The efforts which a party must make before he has exercised “reasonable diligence” vary with the individual cases. It has been said that
“by reasonable diligence is meant appropriate action, where there is some reason to awaken inquiry and direct diligence in a channel in which it would be successful.” Levi v. Oklahoma City, 198 Okl. 414, 179 P. 2d 465, 466.
Here, the defendant in defending a slander suit was interested in proving the truth of the alleged slanderous declaration. This, of course, necessitated exploring into the plaintiff’s past activities. She knew that she had at one *?time lived in or near Las Yegas, but her efforts to secure information about her when she resided there were unproductive. It was not until after the first trial that a neighbor of the plaintiff with whom her husband had talked prior to the first trial, volunteered information which furnished the clue that the plaintiff had worked as a dance hall girl in Ely, Nevada. The defendant, of course, had no control over the timing of this disclosure. But there was at all times prior to the first trial one person who knew where the plaintiff had resided during her lifetime. This person was the plaintiff. The defendant could have, with no cost to herself, submitted to the plaintiff interrogatories to be answered by her concerning her past places of residence and employment, pursuant to Rule 33, U. R. C. P. Following up the answers to such interrogatories would have put the defendant on the same track which led her to make inquiries in Ely after the first trial. The defendant would have by using this simple method of discovery supplied herself with information which she stumbled onto months later. Until a party has utilized such convenient and logically suggestive means of discovery, I think that in law he has not exercised the “reasonable diligence” required by Rule 59 (a) (4). One seeking a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence must show that he and his counsel had no knowledge of evidence or facts which would have put them on inquiry before the trial. Bradley v. Kelley, 105 Vt. 478, 168 A. 554.
This is not the case where the details of an accident, incident or event become material in a case and the parties do not know who, if anyone, witnessed the accident, incident or event. In such cases only the notoriety of a trial may bring forth the unknown witnesses. In the instant case, no such situation existed. The defendant knew at all times that there was one person who could inform her as to the plaintiff’s former places of residence and employment. Yet she did not avail herself of that information. If “reasonable diligence” means anything at all it includes exhausting *132logical and easily accessible avenues of investigation. This the defendant failed to do.
Public interest requires that there be an end to litigation and a new trial is not warranted for the purpose of enabling a party to produce further evidence unless he has shown some legally justifiable excuse for not having produced such evidence at the first trial. Shivers v. Palmer, 59 Cal. App. 2d 572, 139 P. 2d 952. Perhaps before the adoption of the new Utah Rules of Civil Procedure there were no means whereby a party could with slight effort and little cost on his part ascertain facts within the knowledge of the other party. But now with the broad discovery provisions of the New Rules available to litigants, particularly the right to submit interrogatories to the opposing party under Rule 33, “reasonable diligence” to discover evidence will often require utilization of the New Rules on discovery. The greater the means at hand for discovering evidence, the greater the effort which must be exercised by parties to constitute “reasonable diligence”. With the case load in this court and in the trial courts of this state constantly increasing, parties should not be allowed to consume the time of the courts in re-trying cases because they have discovered new evidence, unless they can present a meritorious excuse to the court for their failure to unearth the evidence beforehand. In this respect, the defendant utterly failed. The record is devoid of any reason whatever for her failure to prepare at her convenience interrogatories as to the plaintiff’s former residences and submit them for answering. She clearly has not met the burden cast upon her by Rule 59 (a) (4) to show “reasonable diligence”.
The digests are replete with cases holding that the discovery after trial of matters of public record is not a ground for a new trial unless on diligent search and inquiry in the proper office, such record was not discovered. See Drespel v. Drespel, 56 Nev. 368, 45 P. 2d 792, 54 P. 2d 226, and In re Hammer’s Estate, 145 Wash. 322, 260 P. 532. The effort required of the defendant here to prepare and *133submit interrogatories to the plaintiff is certainly no greater than is required to examine public records. Courts have held generally that new trials should not be granted where the moving party has failed to interview witnesses known to have or likely to have pertinent information. 39 Am. Jur. 169. Little or no greater effort would have been required of the defendant to submit interrogatories to the plaintiff than to interview a witness known to have desired facts in his knowledge.
I would reverse the judgment of the lower court entered on the verdict after the second trial. This would have the effect of reinstating the first verdict and judgment.