Court Opinion

ID: 9849752
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:45:34.268344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:25.669097
License: Public Domain

Judge Martin, John C.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. While I agree with the majority that the instruction requested by plaintiffs included a correct statement of *27North Carolina’s private nuisance law, in my view, the instruction was not warranted by the evidence in this case nor were plaintiffs prejudiced by the trial court’s refusal to give it.
The trial court is required to instruct the jury upon the law relevant to every substantial feature of the case. Holtman v. Reese, 119 N.C. App. 747, 460 S.E.2d 338 (1995). In addition, the trial court must also grant a party’s written request for special instructions pursuant to G.S. § 1A-1, Rule 51(b) when the requested instructions are legally correct and supported by the evidence. Williams v. Randolph, 94 N.C. App. 413, 380 S.E.2d 553, disc. review denied, 325 N.C. 437, 384 S.E.2d 547 (1989). The trial court may refuse, however, to give such requested special instructions when they concern issues which are not relevant to the case. State v. Agnew, 294 N.C. 382, 241 S.E.2d 684, cert. denied, 439 U.S. 830, 58 L.Ed.2d 124 (1978). The jury charge must be considered contextually and in its entirety and will, when it is so considered, be held to be sufficient if “it presents the law of the case in such manner as to leave no reasonable cause to believe the jury was misled or misinformed . . . .” Jones v. Development Co., 16 N.C. App. 80, 86-7, 191 S.E.2d 435, 440, cert. denied, 282 N.C. 304, 192 S.E.2d 194 (1972). The burden is upon the party asserting error to show the jury was misled or that the verdict was affected by the omitted instruction. Robinson v. Seaboard System Railroad, 87 N.C. App. 512, 361 S.E.2d 909 (1987), disc. review denied, 321 N.C. 474, 364 S.E.2d 924 (1988).
The testimony with respect to the design and construction of defendant’s facility, characterized by the majority as a “state of the art defense,” was, in actuality, an insignificant aspect of the case. Such testimony does not appear to me to have been offered in defense of plaintiff’s claim that the noxious odors emanating from defendants’ facility constituted a nuisance, but rather to refute evidence by plaintiffs that such odors were due to the facility’s design and to refute plaintiffs’ repeated characterizations of the facility as “shoddy” and “second rate,” which characterizations were wholly irrelevant to a determination of whether the odors constituted a nuisance. Thus, it was well within the trial court’s discretion to decline the requested instruction as it concerned an issue which was not relevant to the jury’s determination of nuisance. Moreover, the trial court’s instructions adequately presented the law of the case and I find no reasonable basis, other than pure speculation, to conclude that the jury was misled, misinformed, or confused by the trial court’s refusal to give the requested instruction. Plaintiffs having assigned no other errors *28to the conduct of this two week trial, I would vote to sustain the verdict of the jury and find no error.