Court Opinion

ID: 9559351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:27:21.398876+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:46.716393
License: Public Domain

*451LUSK, J.,
dissenting.
I agree with the court that prejudicial error was committed on the trial, but I cannot concur in the disposition which the court makes of the case. I do not suggest at this time a re-examination of the doctrine of Hoag v. Washington-Oregon Corp., 75 Or 588, 144 P 574, 147 P 756, and the cases which follow it, that this court is authorized under Art VII, § 3 of the constitution, in certain circumstances to re-examine the evidence in a law action that has been tried by a jury and to enter judgment based upon such re-examination. But the power so asserted, if it is to stand, should be exercised only with utmost caution and in rare instances. That authority has been held to be granted by the following provision of Art VTI, § 3:
“* * * or if, in any respect, the judgment appealed from should be changed, and the Supreme Court shall be of opinion that it can determine what judgment should have been entered in the court below, it shall direct such judgment to be entered in the same manner and with like effect as decrees are now entered in equity cases on appeal to the Supreme Court”.
When the power is invoked in a personal injury case it imposes on an appellate court the task of determining, upon conflicting evidence and on a typewritten record, questions of negligence, contributory negligence, proximate cause and damages. Here, vital issues of fact are in dispute which the court undertakes to resolve without having seen the witnesses or observed their demeanor on the witness stand, and without a view of the premises which customarily is afforded the jury in cases of this kind — as indeed occurred in the present case. We do not even have the aid of the rule in equity cases under which we give weight to the findings of the trial judge on conflicting evidence. The question of plaintiff’s contributory neg*452ligence in this case is, to my mind, exceedingly close. I agree that it was a question for the jury, but, if I were to attempt to determine it as a question of fact, as the court has done, I should be much inclined to hold against the plaintiff on that issue. But I do not feel that I am in a position to determine it at all, and I do not believe that this is a case in which this court can advisedly say that “it can determine what judgment should have been entered in the court below”. I would remand the case for a new trial.