Court Opinion

ID: 9527120
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:27:40.147715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:34.534427
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(dissenting, with whom Abrams, J., joins).
Faced with a jury’s answers to a series of improvidently chosen special questions, the court today chooses to order judgment for the defendant even though the defendant did not object to the form of the questions. I dissent.
The court states that, because the jury answered “no” to special question no. 7, which asked whether a person of ordinary prudence would have refrained from serving liquor to Sanders in the same or similar circumstances, “it follows that the plaintiff had failed to prove negligence [on the part of the defendant].” Ante at 359. The court has confused the issue of what responses the jury were allowed to give regarding their assessment of the plaintiff’s presentation of evidence with the issue of what the plaintiff actually did prove at trial. This case, went to the jury on three theories of negligence; the plaintiff claimed that Eagle Brook had acted negligently because it served alcohol to Sanders with knowledge that (!) he was intoxicated, (2) he was a drunkard, or (3) he had been intoxicated in the last six months. The judge divided the special questions into three sections to reflect the plaintiff’s three theories and asked for an assessment of damages at the *361end of each section. The jury’s answer to special question no. 7 occurred within the section that asked whether the defendant negligently had served alcohol to Sanders while he was intoxicated. The jury found that Sanders had not been intoxicated at the time he was served any of the four drinks he consumed at the defendant’s barroom. Therefore, the jury’s response to special question no. 7, that a person of ordinary prudence would not have refrained from serving Sanders “in the same or similar circumstances,” is relevant only to the plaintiff’s theory of negligence based on Sanders’s alleged intoxication. Nevertheless, the court applies the jury’s answer to special question no. 7 to all three of the plaintiff’s theories of negligence.
The judge below did not pose the equivalent of special question no. 7 to the jury regarding the plaintiff’s two theories of negligence drawn from the provisions of G. L. c. 138, § 69. The failure to do so prevented the jury from rendering its judgment whether the defendant’s violation of G. L. c. 138, § 69, constituted negligence, and in effect forced the jury to equate a violation of the statute with negligence per se. This was clearly improper. See LaClair v. Silberline Mfg. Co., 379 Mass. 21, 28 (1979). However, the court’s dismay at the error of the judge does not justify conjuring up of a jury determination in favor of the defendant.
Despite their answer to special question no. 7, the jury in this case awarded the plaintiff $800,000 on his claims that the defendant negligently served Sanders with knowledge that he was a drunkard and that he had been intoxicated in the past six months. In determining whether there was any inconsistency in the jury’s answers, we have previously held that we must view the jury’s answers “in the light of the attendant circumstances, including the pleadings, issues submitted, and the judge’s instructions.” Solimene v. B. Grauel & Co., KG, 399 Mass. 790, 800 (1987). Furthermore, we have held that, where a jury’s answers to special questions are inconsistent, “a new trial is required because it is the jurors’ constitutional responsibility to resolve the facts.” Id. at 801. See Caccavale v. Raymark Indus., Inc., 404 Mass. 93, *36298-99 (1989). It is not for a court to usurp a jury’s function to resolve factual disputes. The court today ignores both of these well settled points of law. I decline to join.