Court Opinion

ID: 9790607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:55:53.908459+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:30.526636
License: Public Domain

GOODWIN, J.,
dissenting.
The majority opinion attempts to construct a hypothesis of accidental death. I do not believe that the facts set forth in the opinion support any plausible hypothesis of an accident. If the circumstantial evidence tended to prove anything, it proved only that the deceased shot himself in the mouth while lying on his back on a bed. He may or may not have intended that result. Based solely upon the evidence in this case, and excluding the presumption relied upon by the plaintiff, any verdict attempting to decide between suicide and accidental death strikes me as pure guesswork.
The majority holds that there is a presumption against suicide. If there is such a presumption, then the presumption would, under our evidence statutes, carry the plaintiff’s case to the jury. I question, however, whether there ought to be such a presumption. See White, Presumptions in Violent Death Cases or Quo Vadis Presumption?, 15 U Miami L Rev 1 (1960). The generality upon which the so-called presumption is based is too broad to justify its employment as evidence in every ease of an unexplained violent death. If the majority view is correct, it would be equally logical to employ the presumption in exactly the same way in the case of an unwitnessed death by hanging. The possibility that a man would accidentally fashion *330a noose and hang himself is no less likely than the possibility that the decedent in the case at bar lay down on his back and accidentally shot himself.
The majority holds, however, that the presumption operates. While I do not concur in that view, I agree that there was error in the manner in which the presumption was explained to the jury.
The majority acknowledges that in a case of this kind the burden of proof does not shift, and that it is error to instruct the jury in effect that the burden is upon the defendant to overcome the presumption against suicide. Accordingly, if for no other reason, the defendants are entitled to a new trial. Whether or not the error which the majority recognizes as error was properly preserved by exception, the jury did not understand the effect of the presumption as the majority says it should be understood. I cannot accept the majority’s reasoning that the error in this case was not reversible.
The jury was told that the presumption is evidence, and that “the plaintiff is entitled to its benefit throughout the trial of this case and throughout your deliberations on the facts until such time, if ever, as sufficient evidence may satisfy your minds to the contrary.”
The instruction upon which the jury presumably relied in its deliberations thus shifted to the defendants the burden of proving that the deceased intentionally shot himself. In shifting the burden of proof to the defendants, the challenged instruction denied the defendants a trial upon the theory that the majority says is correct.
I concede that the defendants did not phrase their exception with the learning that might be employed *331after reading the majority opinion in this case. I believe that the error, however, was one that went to the heart of the matter in controversy, and that such an error should be noticed under Rule 46.
We all recognize that the trial judge was following the law as it had been declared in our former opinions. It should go without saying that in a case of this kind when we are re-examining an important rule of law a finding of error implies no want of learning upon the part of the trial court. If we make a substantial change in the rule we likewise should not hold a litigant responsible for a failure to state his exception with prophetic insight concerning the rule that will emerge upon appeal.
I would reverse the judgment and remand the cause for a new trial under the law as set forth in the majority opinion.
McAllister, C. J., and Rossman, J., join in this dissent.