Court Opinion

ID: 9773538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:48:59.088007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:54.874712
License: Public Domain

FINCH, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I would reverse and remand for new trial.
In my opinion the giving of Instruction No. 7 constituted reversible error. I can conceive of no excuse for or justification of the second paragraph of that instruction and the principal opinion offers none. In fact, it disapproves of it, says it is dangerous and is not to be used in future cases. It concludes that it was not reversible error but I cannot concur in that conclusion.
The jury had been informed that plaintiff had been paid compensation by General Motors although they were not given figures as to how much. They heard plaintiff’s witness Huston identify a file as containing a receipt for compensation on Sampson plus a schedule of medical bills, nurses statements and hospital bills paid by General Motors for plaintiff. Later plaintiff’s counsel told the jury that the medical expenses amounted to $14,938.55. With that background the court gave Instruction No. 7 to the jury. It strains credulity to assume that the jury would consider that it was simply a meaningless explanation to them which was not to affect their actions and which they should ignore. Instructions are exactly what they are called, instructions to guide the jury in its actions.
What then, would have been its effect? Actually, there is no way to know. The admonition in the first paragraph of the instruction was that workmen’s compensation benefits and medical expenses paid by General Motors were not to be considered as barring recovery or diminishing damages, if any. However, the plain effect of the second paragraph is to inform the jury that the plaintiff is not going to be able to keep all the money they might award him. The jury might reason therefrom that they could and should add to the sum they wanted plaintiff to have an additional amount to cover his obligations to General Motors. But how much? The instruction was a roving commission, not specific in this regard. The jury might have decided that this would be the $14,938.55 of medical bills plus some unknown amount of workmen’s compensation payments. The first paragraph clearly tells the jury that the plaintiff received something besides his medical ex*592penses but not how much or what they were for. In view of plaintiff’s serious injuries, they could have concluded that the compensation paid included damages for pain and suffering, lost wages, etc., and was considerable.
If that potential addition was clearly limited to the medical bills, it would be possible to say that remittitur of the amount of those bills would cure any prejudice. But such isn’t the case. There simply is no way to know whether or if the jury added a sum to make plaintiff whole after reimbursement or, if it did, how much. We only know that the court at plaintiff’s instance gave an erroneous, uncalled for instruction that had the potential of misleading the jury as to what they should or could do in assessing damages. Under such circumstances remittitur is not a viable alternative.
Since I would reverse and remand for retrial, I make the further observation that on retrial plaintiff’s verdict directing instruction should be redrafted. In my view Instruction No. 3, in not requiring the jury to specifically find that the conduct submitted constituted negligence, did not conform to the general pattern employed in MAI.
A format which requires a finding that defendant was negligent is used repeatedly in MAI. For example, see 17.02, 20.01, 20.-02, 21.01, 22.01 and 24.01. Any of these could have been adapted to fit this plaintiff’s case. Instead, plaintiff obviously gave an instruction patterned after the instruction utilized by plaintiff in Gorman v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, 427 S.W.2d 390, 393 (Mo.1968). The difficulty with relying on that decision as authority for a failure to require a finding of negligence is that the instruction in Gorman was not attacked on that basis and that issue was not considered or decided. I recognize that some of the instructions in the 22.00 series of MAI use a different format but I would require that plaintiff’s instruction conform to the general pattern which MAI utilizes.