Court Opinion

ID: 9637362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:04:43.162601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:55.601045
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Musmanno:
The differentiation between so-called “positive testimony” and “negative testimony” is one of the most shadowy, meaningless, abstruse, illogical, incongruous, unscientific, and bizarre distinctions known to law. And if this Court will only cease talking about it, the Bar will understand that the distinction has gone the way of many of the barnacles which have either fallen off or been scraped off the hull of the ship of American jurisprudence. The Majority. Opinion says in the case at bar: “The question of whether a statement of a witness, to wit, that he did not hear a sound or that no bell was rung, was negative or positive testimony and was or was not sufficient to take the case to the jury, in the face of strong positive affirmative testimony, that a bell was rung, has vexed and perplexed the Courts.”
*86If this “question” has vexed and perplexed the Courts, it is a vexation and perplexity which this Court encourages. The effectiveness of a witness’s testimony should be evaluated according to the physical opportunities he enjoyed to ascertain the facts, the trustworthiness of his senses, and his reliability as an honest man. Whether he replies No or Yes to a given question in Court has nothing to do with positiveness or negativeness. A categorical no is as positive as a shouting yes. If A asks B to lend him ten dollars and B says no, nothing can be more positive to A than that he is not going to get the ten dollars. The negative-, ness of the reply does not alter the positiveness of the fact, that he will need to go elsewhere for the ten dollars he seeks.
If a witness is asked whether he heard the whistle of a locomotive, and he answers no, assuming he was in a position to hear the whistle if blown, it is almost fanciful to say that his testimony is negative. The Majority quotes at length from the Majority Opinion in Costack v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 376 Pa. 341, in which this Court attempted to classify the confusion, the vexations, and the perplexities arising from the “positive” and “negative” “rule.” So far as achieving any definitive principle of law from an analysis of the cases on this subject, one might as well devote his time and energies to classifying the dead leaves as they fall from the trees in the autumn, the ripples of water as they drop over a series of rapids and cascades, or the flakes of snow in an Alpine avalanche. In my dissenting opinion in the Costack case, I said: “The Majority Opinion asserts that there are two classes of cases on the subject under discussion. The time has come to have only one — the right one. It does not comport with sound judgment, and much less with justice, to say that an injured person may or may not recover *87in a given lawsuit, depending upon whether a witness’s testimony is to be considered as negative or positive, and that depending, in turn, upon which line of cases the adjudicating Court decides to follow.”
In the case at bar the plaintiff, John Ferruzza,. was injured when a truck in which he was riding (owned by Cirlingione, trading as Red Star Beverage Company), was struck by a fire truck belonging to the City of Pittsburgh. The accident occurred on October 7, 1942, at the intersection of West North Avenue and Arch Street in Pittsburgh. The Red Star truck was already in the intersection proceeding forward on a green light when the fire truck collided with vehicle’s cab in which the plaintiff was sitting. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $25,000 against the City of Pittsburgh and the Red Star Beverage Company, which had been brought in as an additional defendant.
The City of Pittsburgh appealed, seeking judgment n.o.v. or a new trial. This Court has refused judgment n.o.v. but has ordered a new trial. The Majority Opinion says: “Was the City’s driver guilty of negligence of a reckless nature? This depends upon whether the fire truck sounded its siren or rang its bell. This in turn depends — all parties agree — upon whether plaintiff’s testimony that he did not hear a siren or bell was, under the circumstances here involved, sufficiently positive in form and substance to take the case to the jury.”
It is difficult to see how the plaintiff’s testimony could be more positive on this point: “Q. And did you hear any siren or bell as you approached this intersection? A. I didn’t sir. Q. And did you hear any bell or siren when you were a block from the intersection? A. No, sir. Q. Did you hear any sound, siren or bell, at any time before this accident? A. No, sir. Q. Did *88you hear any sound, siren or hell, at the time of the impact? A. No, sir.” (Emphasis supplied.) These answers, incidentally, were given on cross-examination.
What more could Ferruzza say to show that no audible warning signal was given by the fire truck? Moreover, he testified that if a siren, had been blowing or a bell had been ringing just before the accident, he would have heard the warning.
This Court says that the plaintiffs evidence, was sufficient to take the case to the jury but that the jury’s verdict was against the weight of the evidence. The plaintiff’s testimony was supported by the testimony of the driver of the truck, Regatuso, and by a disinterested witness, Felix A. Didio, who testified that he heard a bell ringing but that no siren was blowing. The plaintiff also produced an expert witness on fire equipment (John Douglas) who • testified that he examined the fire truck a “few days” after the accident •and that “there was positively no siren on'the truck when I inspected it.”
The Majority Opinion says that Douglas’s testimony was inadmissible. Why? The Majority cites the case of Nestor v. George, 354 Pa. 19, as authority, but the facts in that case were wholly different. There the defendant railway company offered to show that a fare rope was in the same condition five days prior to an accident that it was at the time of the accident. This Court held the offer inadmissible because there was no evidence that the condition of the rope continued until the date of the accident. Here, we are speaking not about the condition of a device (the fire siren) but about its very existence, and not before the accident but' after the accident. The Majority quotes Henry on Trial Evidence: “Whenever the condition of a particular place or thing at a certain time is in question, evidence of its condition at a prior or subsequent *89time is admissible if accompanied by proof that it has not changed in the meanwhile.” This, of course,, is good law, but how is it authority here? How could the plaintiff show that the fire truck had not undergone some alteration after the accident? The fire truck was in the possession of the City. Once the expert testified that at the time of his inspection the fire truck had no siren, the City had the right to show, if those were the facts, that the truck did have a siren or that it had been removed for some reason. Instead of meeting Douglas’s testimony head-on, it seemed the City was more concerned about , showing, that Douglas had no permission to inspect the truck.
The Majority says: “The evidence produced by the City of Pittsburgh with respect to the happening of the accident conflicted in almost all material respects with that produced by the plaintiff,” This is not unusual. It is conflict in testimony which makes a trial, and it is the province of the jury to decide which side of the conflict predominates in convincing qualities.
Moreover, this Court has said more times than there are leaves on the largest tree in Fairmount Park in the summertime that it will not reverse a lower Court’s discretion in the matter of awarding or refusing a new trial where only credibility of witnesses is involved, because the Trial Court is in a better position than an appellate court to pass upon credibility. I do not see anything in the record which justifies this Court in reversing that position in the case at bar.
In sending the case back for retrial the Majority-uses the Costack case as an illustration of how the lower court should instruct the jury on the subject of “negative” and “positive” testimony, namely: “The court should also have explained to the jury the relative value, from a qualitative standpoint, of the kind *90of ‘negative’ testimony given by Eámkel and the ‘positive’- . or affirmative testimony of the defendant?s wit-messes as to the ringing of the bell and sounding of .the horn, and should have called their attention to the ordinary superiority of the latter type of evidence.” (Emphasis supplied.)
• It would, appear that, in spite of. all the vexations and perplexities which this kind of. a useless and confusing differentiation has caused- in the past, this Court is -determined to invite more vexations and perplexities. I wish to completely disassociate myself .from so-illogical, a procedure,. and so-indicate by this dissent.
■' I.might also add that sending cases back for retrials, when there is really mo question of law involved, and the jury has already passed on the facts, does not help to reduce the backlog of untried cases in Pittsburgh. ' .