Court Opinion

ID: 9608680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:15:41.712543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:47.065177
License: Public Domain

DONALD L. Corbin, Justice, concurring. I concur with tmajority’s ice, this matter, but I write separately to express my concern about the trial court’s ruling that permitted Appellees’ counsel, Mr. Howard, to deliver a second closing rebuttal. I am deeply concerned that our holding today will serve as an unwelcome precedent, permitting or even encouraging this type of action by parties in the future. Specifically, I am personally appalled at Howard’s statements regarding his upbringing and moral philosophy, and I believe his comments went beyond that necessary to cure the prejudice that had resulted from Mr. Mars’s erroneous statements about . Charles Scharlau’s alleged untarnished reputation. I am even more appalled that the trial judge allowed this irrelevant argument to continue despite repeated objections by Mr. Everett, co-counsel for the Appellants.1 I understand the difficult predicament that the trial judge was in, and I agree with the majority that he was correct to allow Howard to inform the jury of Mars’s misstatements. However, in my opinion, he went too far when he allowed Howard to comment further, particularly about Mars’s knowledge of the falsity of his own statements and about how “twenty years of cheating and lying and hiding and twisting the truth have just come home to roost.” The reason that this is not a dissent, however, is because this entire mess is of the Appellants’ own making. This situation is closely akin to the doctrine of invited error, and I will not reward Appellants for their own counsel’s misrepresentations to the jury. In sum, this trial involved the claims of approximately 7,000 persons and took some two weeks and numerous witnesses to try. There was no reversible error committed during the trial. I cannot in good conscience vote to reverse this case based on my concern about the precedent that might be set for future cases. As the majority correctly points out, the trial court’s ruling was ultimately a discretionary call that had to be made “on the horns of a dilemma.” Accordingly, in light of the exceptional and unique circumstances of this case, I simply cannot say that the trial court’s ruling was either arbitrary or groundless. Sam Laser, Spl. J., joins.   I hasten to point out that Mr. Everett never deviated from the maintenance of professional integrity during the course of the trial.