Court Opinion

ID: 9757140
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:20:21.125468+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:35.215283
License: Public Domain

Amestoy, C.J.,
dissenting. I agree that the Congressional subcommittee hearing report was erroneously admitted, but I disagree with the ultimate conclusion of the majority that its admission compels reversal because “defendants were denied a fair trial.” I therefore respectfully dissent.
No task of an appellate court is more difficult than attempting to assess from a cold record the fairness of a trial. The challenge is particularly difficult when, as here, experienced trial counsel for both parties test the bounds of advocacy in an emotionally charged case involving traumatic injury to a young child. I do not quarrel with the majority's assessment that the tactics of plaintiffs’ counsel merit disapproval, but for the reasons set forth below I do not believe we should find reversible error where an “experienced trial judge on the scene put the matter soundly to the jury.” State v. Slocum, 132 Vt. 476, 480, 321 A.2d 51, 54 (1974).
Although the majority correctly characterizes the evidentiary issues that led to the admission of the Congressional subcommittee report as having arisen in the context of the parties’ dispute over the weight to be accorded to the federal standard on the flammability of cotton, the characterization does not fully capture the nature of the defense in this case. A recurring theme repeatedly emphasized by defendants was that the flammability of cotton clothing was obvious to an ordinary consumer.*
*278By both explicit and implicit argument, defendants sought to convey to the jury the message that a finding of liability would subject cotton manufacturers to lawsuits which in turn could compromise the economic vitality of an industry. Thus, for example, defendants’ counsel began his opening argument as follows:
There’s no real question in the case about Stephanie’s injuries____We feel sorry about that. And we are not here to really talk much about that at all____What this case is about, however,... what Mr. Hemley is asking you to find, that this ordinary routine thing that we are all intimately familiar with ... that we all own ... that this is somehow a dangerous and defective product that you people should say should not be on the market. That’s what he is asking you----
Defendants coupled their assertion that plaintiffs were asking the jury to find that cotton “is some kind of defective, dangerous, bad product and they want you to say take it off the market” with the representation that the garment issued passed a flammability standard that, although unchanged since 1953, “is periodically reviewed by Congress by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to see if it is a good standard.”
The plaintiffs’ aggressive counter-arguments relating to flammability standards should be viewed within the context of plaintiffs’ counsel seeking to overcome defendants’ specific defense to plaintiffs’ factual allegations and defendants’ more general defense-that a verdict for plaintiffs would put a staple of American life — the manufacture of cotton garments — at risk.
This context was well understood by the trial judge in assessing the use to which the disputed Congressional report was to be put by plaintiffs’ counsel. As the majority accurately points out, the court considered the document in evidence for the limited purpose of depicting cotton industry lobbying of the flammability standards. The majority’s identification of the potentially prejudicial testimony contained within the exhibit is much more specific than that made by defense counsel at the time of the objection. Although defense counsel certainly preserved his objection, his description of the report’s contents — “It’s basically just a bunch of testimonials from a lot of people who have an interest one way or another on this thing” — *279cannot be said to have alerted the trial court to the potential prejudicial impact, now so apparent to an appellate court with the advantages of hindsight and reflection.
I accept the majority’s assessment that closing argument of plaintiffs’ counsel was improper, most egregiously in its disregard of the trial court’s evidentiary ruling that the exhibit was not to be cited for purposes such as the number of injuries from clothing fires. It is, in fact, defendants’ failure to afford the trial court the opportunity to cure the improper use to which the disputed exhibit was put in plaintiffs’ closing argument that should govern our resolution of this appeal.
The general rule “is that a timely objection is necessary to bring to the trial court’s attention alleged errors in the conduct of a trial.” Woods v. Burlington N. R.R., 768 F.2d 1287, 1292 (11th Cir. 1985), rov’d on other grounds, 480 U.S. 1 (1987). “The rule is applied to argument of counsel, even argument found to be inflammatory, prejudicial and improper.” Id.
Defendants failed to request a corrective charge to the jury to address any statements they deemed improper. We recently reemphasized our reluctance “to overturn a jury verdict based on the arguments of counsel.” Brown v. Roadway Express, Inc., 169 Vt. 633, 635, 740 A.2d 352, 356 (1999) (mem.). This is particularly true where, as here, defendants’ counsel expressed the view that a curative charge would be futile. See id. (where counsel did not seek a curative instruction because he thought it likely to “do more harm than good,” trial court did not abuse its discretion in not giving a more strongly worded admonition to the jury).
In the instant case, the trial court instructed the jury that “arguments made by the lawyers are not evidence in the case.” See Greenway v. Buffalo Hilton Hotel, 143 F.3d 47, 51 (2d Cir. 1998) (noting that claims of improper appeals to juror bias must be evaluated “in the context of the entire trial” and standard jury instructions that arguments of counsel are not evidence). Although defendants argue strenuously that plaintiffs’ counsel’s closing argument must have had a prejudicial effect, the burden of such a demonstration is on the appellant. See Debus v. Grand Union Stores of Vermont, 159 Vt. 537, 544-45, 621 A.2d 1288, 1293 (1993) (“heavy handed” closing argument of plaintiff does not entitle defendant to new trial where defendant makes no showing that plaintiff’s argument had a prejudicial effect, nor can one be found in the record).
Even where we have disapproved of counsel’s “argumentative tactics,” Slocum, 132 Vt. at 479, 321 A.2d at 54, or have found that *280counsel’s argument “exceeded] the bounds of propriety,” State v. Bailey, 144 Vt. 86, 100-01, 475 A.2d 1045, 1054 (1984), abrogated on other grounds by Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 (1988), we have not found reversible error. The tactical decisions of sophisticated trial counsel to neither ask for a limiting instruction to reduce the risk of juror misuse of the erroneously admitted exhibit, see Haynes v. Golub Corp., 166 Vt. 228, 236, 692 A.2d 377, 382 (1997), nor to seek a curative instruction to address prejudicial remarks in closing argument, see Bailey, 144 Vt. at 101, 475 A.2d at 1054, should not compel reversal where an experienced trial judge — in a far superior position to evaluate prejudicial effect than an appellate court — has not found prejudice. See State v. Mears, 170 Vt. 336, 345-46, 749 A.2d 600, 607 (2000) (trial court in best position to evaluate any prejudicial effect; therefore, we will uphold its ruling “unless the court’s discretion was either totally withheld or exercised on grounds clearly untenable or unreasonable” (internal quotation marks and citations omitted)). I do not believe that the erroneous admission of the disputed exhibit was so prejudicial as to deny defendants a fair trial. Therefore, I respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Justice Morse joins me in this dissent.

 Defendants’ counsel sought to make the point in cross-examination of the child’s mother:
*278Q: Ms. Needham, you’re not telling the jury that you didn’t know clothing would bum, are you?
R: No. I said I didn’t know that it would bum like that.