Court Opinion

ID: 9728887
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:18:11.786544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:52.677125
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting in part.
I join in the Court’s judgment reversing and remanding for a new trial and in the opinion’s treatment of the infant plaintiff’s contributory negligence, the liability of the respective defendants, and, with a minor caveat, the insurance-related voir dire questions to prospective jurors. It is with regard to the propriety of an “outcome” instruction that I part company with the majority.
I
The Court holds that “ordinarily, a jury [should be] informed of the legal effect of its findings as to percentages of negligence in a comparative negligence trial * * * Ante at 327. We are told that such information will better enable a jury “to fulfill its fact-finding function”, ibid., without being told how or why this is so. I doubt that it is.
*355The first section of the Comparative Negligence Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.1, provides that in negligence actions for personal injuries a plaintiff’s contributory fault will not bar recovery if that fault “was not greater than the negligence of the person against whom recovery is sought.” Instead, the plaintiff’s damages are diminished by the percentage of fault attributable to him.
It is the next section of the Act, N.J.S.A. 2A:15~5.2, that addresses the judge’s and jury’s respective roles in applying this statutory principle. That section reads as follows:
In all negligence actions in which the question of liability is in dispute, the trier of fact shall make the following as findings of fact:
a. The amount of damages which would be recoverable by the injured party regardless of any consideration of negligence, that is, the full value of the injured party’s damages;
b. The extent, in the form of a percentage, of each parties’ [sic] negligence. The percentage of negligence of each party shall be based on 100% and the total of all percentages of negligence of all the parties to a suit shall be 100%.
c. The judge shall mold the judgment from the finding of fact made by the trier of fact.
It is clear that the statute contains no explicit prohibition against the trial court informing the jurors of what effect their findings will have on the ultimate outcome of the case. Nevertheless is seems equally clear to me that the sense of the statutory language is that the jury now has a precisely limited function: to determine, on the basis of answers to specific questions, the extent of fault of the parties, not the extent of defendant’s liability for damages. The latter, under subsection c. above, devolves upon the judge. Where, as here, the law we deal with was created not by the courts but by the legislature, we should respect the considerable effort made by the legislature to spell out those separate functions.
Supportive of this approach is the circumstance that our Comparative Negligence Act is patterned after the comparative *356negligence statute of Wisconsin, Wis.Stat.Ann. § 895.045 (West Supp.1978), whose Supreme Court has rejected “outcome” instructions. E. g., Kobelinski v. Milwaukee & Suburban Transport Corp., 56 Wis.2d 504, 202 N.W.2d 415 (1972). A statute taken from another state is ordinarily adopted with the prior constructions placed on it by the highest court of the parent jurisdiction; it comes laden with the hereditary baggage of that court’s decisions. See Woodward v. Haney, 564 P.2d 844, 845 (Wyo.Sup.Ct.1977); 2A C. Sands, Sutherland Statutory Construction § 52.02 (4th ed. 1973). New Jersey courts have adhered to this principle in interpreting the Act now before us in Suter v. San Angelo Foundry & Machine Co., 81 N.J. 150, 161 (1979); Warshany v. Supermarkets General Corp., 161 N.J.Super. 515, 521 (Law Div. 1978). It is, then, significant to note the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s “fundamental rule” that it is reversible error for either the court or counsel to inform the jury of the effect of their answers to the comparative negligence questions on the ultimate result in the case. Kobelinski v. Milwaukee & Suburban Transport Co., supra, 202 N.W.2d at 425.
The reason for this rule is found in a later decision in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court explained that
the jury is the finder of fact and it has no function in determining how the law should be applied to the facts found. It is not the function of a jury in a case between private parties on the determination of comparative negligence to be influenced by sympathy for either party, nor should it attempt to manipulate the apportionment of negligence to achieve a result that may seem socially desirable to a single juror or to a group of jurors. [McGowan v. Story, 70 Wis.2d 189, 198, 234 N.W.2d 325, 329 (1975).]
See also Avery v. Wadlington, 526 P.2d 295 (Colo.Sup.Ct.1974).
In Avery, supra, the trial court refused to allow any explanation or comment to the jury on the effect of its determination of the parties’ respective degrees of fault under a comparative *357negligence statute much like our own. Plaintiff, who was found to be 70% negligent, argued on appeal that “outcome” instructions and comment should be permitted. The Supreme Court of Colorado rejected this contention, emphasizing that the enactment “divides the responsibility for a fair and good result between the jury and the judge”, 526 P.2d at 297, and thereby “enhances the chance of a pure verdict on material facts alone.” Id. It concluded that the language in the Colorado statute, similar to that found in N.J.S.A. 2A:15-5.2, “mandates in precise language” that the jury is the fact-finder and “as such simply answers questions posed to it in the special verdict form” after being instructed with reference to this function. 526 P.2d at 297. On the other hand the trial court’s role is to apply the statutory law to the jury’s findings of fact and thereby bring about the ultimate result through entry of the judgment.
Under this system, it is not the jury’s function to attempt to control the effect of the law of comparative negligence in their special findings. Jury involvement is thus greatly simplified and a pure verdict is more readily attainable. The only law which the jury members need to understand is the law which enables them to answer the specific questions asked of them in the special verdict form. Under this system, it is unnecessary for the jury to concern itself with how much the plaintiff receives or whether the plaintiff receives anything. [M] 1
*358Whatever merit may inhere in the cases going the other way, e. g., Seppi v. Betty, 99 Idaho 186, 579 P.2d 683 (1978); Thomas v. Board of Township Trustees, 224 Kan. 529, 582 P.2d 271 (1978), and in this Court’s determination today, must give way to the perceived intention of the legislature. Therefore I would hold that neither instructions nor comments on the outcome should be permitted in a comparative negligence case.
II
There remains to explain the “minor caveat” attached to my agreement with the majority’s treatment of the insurance-related voir dire questions to prospective jurors. The Court points out, ante at 347:
In this State the voir dire questioning of prospective jurors is regulated by statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:78-4, and by court rule, R. l:8-3(a). Both the statute and the rule allow the judge to control the scope of inquiry and in practice it is the judge who does the questioning. See State v. Manley, 54 N.J. 259, 282-283 (1989).
It is with the practice of the judge questioning the prospective jurors almost exclusively and with the attorneys participating only on the rarest of occasions that I disagree.
To the extent that the statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:78-4, speaks to the question at all, it suggests that the attorneys will be permitted to address the jurors. This, as might be expected, is within limits set by the trial court. The enactment provides, in pertinent part:
*359Upon the trial of any cause, civil or criminal, all parties may, within the discretion of the court, question any person summoned as a juror, after his name is drawn from the box and before he is sworn as a juror, and without the interposition of any challenge, to elicit information for the purpose of determining whether or not to interpose a peremptory challenge, and of disclosing whether or not there is cause for challenge. * * * Such questions shall be permitted for the purpose of disclosing whether or not the juror is qualified, impartial and without interest in the result of the action. The questioning shall be conducted under the supervision and control of the trial judge and in open court.
Our Rule of Court, however, makes it unmistakably clear that the role of the attorney in jury selection is to be severely . restricted. R. l:8-3(a), governing examination of jurors, reads in part as follows:
For the purpose of determining whether a challenge should be interposed, the court shall interrogate the prospective jurors in the box after the required number are drawn without placing them under oath. The parties or their attorneys may supplement the court’s interrogation in its discretion.
As explained in Pressler, Current N.J. Court Rules, Comment R. 1:8-3, the practice since the adoption of the Rule in 1969 has been for the trial court to consider the attorneys’ requests that certain specific questions be posed or that particular attitudes, opinions or potential biases be proved. While State v. Manley, 54 N.J. 259 (1969), does not entirely foreclose supplementary questioning by counsel after the court has completed its interrogation, nevertheless that case cautions that the “discretionary portion” of R. l:8-3(a) must be administered with the exercise of “considerable restraint.” 54 N.J. at 282. In actual practice this restraint amounts to an almost total prohibition of direct questioning by counsel to jurors and direct responses. It is with this prohibition that I disagree.
Initially I must point out that I discern in the trial bar no reservoir of resentment over the present practice, nor among my colleagues any groundswell of enthusiasm for scrapping the rule in favor of a system whereby attorneys may, as prior to 1969, *360conduct their own examination of prospective jurors — always, of course, under the firm control of the trial court. Since the Rule went into effect more than a decade ago, a whole new generation of trial lawyers has appeared on the scene. In all likelihood the majority of,trial judges have been appointed since the effective date of the rule. Active practitioners probably have more pressing problems to occupy their time than the mounting of a persuasive and well-documented campaign through petition to the appropriate Supreme Court committee, looking to a revision in the Rule, even if they do happen to favor one. In short, those most directly concerned may be of the view that things are going along just swimmingly under the present system. While the practice is not put in issue in the present case, and while there is no apparent sentiment either within or without the Court favoring a change, I nevertheless take this opportunity briefly to state my view of why the present practice strikes me as wrong. In thus struggling against the tide I make no effort to marshal either the empirical data or supporting authorities (assuming there are any) required for a successful frontal attack, today’s exercise being more in the nature of an incidental reflection.
In sum my view is that a party is deprived of an important right when his attorney is foreclosed in practical effect from conducting significant and relevant dialogue with a prospective juror. I do not for a moment suggest that proper dialogue would permit the attorney to make sweeping declarations, masquerading as questions, such as amount to “trying the case” on voir dire. The trial court can and should nip this sort of thing in the bud. But the very purpose of the voir dire examination is, as the statute tells us, “to elicit information for the purpose of determining whether or not to interpose a peremptory challenge, and of disclosing whether or not there is cause for challenge.” N.J.S.A. 2A:78-4. The right to elicit that information by “questionpng] any person summoned as a juror” is given to “all parties.” Id. That right is severely restricted — impermissibly, I *361suggest — by what too often amounts to “boiler plate” interrogation of the prospective jurors through the trial court, with only sparingly-granted supplementation.
One question of a juror very often gives rise to further inquiry, based on details of the case known to trial counsel but not available to the court at the jury selection stage. It seems to me plain silly to suggest either that significant time is saved or that the requisite flow of information from prospective juror to counsel is aided when the trial judge monopolizes the interrogation process and in the course thereof has to weigh (with one eye fir,mly fixed on this Court’s stern admonition of “considerable restraint”) whether to pose any additional questions suggested by the lawyers.
Furthermore, a party is entitled to the visceral reaction of the trial attorney to the prospective juror, and especially to the attorney’s appraisal of the venireman’s visceral reaction to him, to the extent that it may be divined. This is difficult to identify and articulate, and the tendency to exaggerate it in some considerable degree is no doubt endemic to the trial bar; but it is nonetheless real, it is valuable, and it should be taken into account.
With jury selection forcefully supervised by the trial bench and buttressed by unmistakable appellate decisions supporting such supervision, I would think the ills said to have been encountered under the pre-Rule system, see Manley, supra, 54 N.J. at 276, 281, could be accommodated without depriving the parties of the basic right — one which the present practice diminishes to an unacceptable degree. True, as anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with judicial administration recognizes, innovative approaches to a myriad of vexatious problems besetting the courts are required lest the judicial machinery become so clogged as to become unworkable. The applause for the imaginative steps that mark New Jersey’s progress in the direction of more efficient administration of justice is well deserved. But if in fact our present practice facilitates the jury *362selection process — a proposition that is at least questionable— then I count the cost of what is being sacrificed on the altar of expediency as too great.
Justice SCHREIBER joins in Part I of this opinion.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER, HANDLER and POLLOCK — 7.
Opposed —None.

Whether in response to this determination is not revealed, but the Colorado legislature sharply altered its comparative negligence statute to provide specifically that “the trial court shall instruct the jury on the effect of its finding as to the degree of negligence of each party.” In addition, the attorneys for each party were henceforth permitted “to argue the effect of the instruction on the facts which are before the jury.” Colo.Rev.Stat, § X3 — 21— 111(4) (1976 Cum.Supp.). Following this revision the Colorado trial courts have, of course, given “outcome” instructions, and it has been held reversible error where such a charge has not been furnished. Appelgren v. Agri Chem, Inc., 562 P.2d 766, 767 (Colo.Ct.App.1977); Loup-Miller v. Brauer & Associates-Rocky Mountain, Inc., 572 P.2d 845, 847 (Colo.Ct.App.1977).
*358Similarly, both Minnesota and Wyoming experienced drastic changes of position on whether a jury could be informed of the consequences of its special verdicts, the former by way of amendment to its court rules of civil procedure following a statutory change. (Compare McCourtie v. United States Steel Corp., 93 N.W.2d 552, 562-63 (Minn.Sup.Ct.1958) with Krengel v. Midwest Automatic Photo, Inc., 203 N.W.2d 841, 848 (Minn.Sup.Ct.1973)); and the latter by reason of legislative action, see Woodward v. Haney, 564 P.2d 844, 846 (Wyo.Sup.Ct.1977). As to a similar development in Kansas, see 16 Washburn L. J. 114 (1976), and 18 Washburn L. J. 606 (1979).