Court Opinion

ID: 9637773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:19:53.295558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:00.365027
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Not only has the majority stated an unnecessarily restrictive rule to determine when extraneous communication to a jury requires a new trial, but even applying the majority’s rule to the facts of this case, a new trial is required.
The three part test set out by the majority to determine whether or not there was prejudice in the extraneous influence, here the broadcast, is as follows:
1) whether the extraneous influence relates to a central issue in the case or merely involves a collateral issue; 2) whether the extraneous influence provided the jury with information they did not have before them at trial; and 3) whether the extraneous influence was emotional or inflammatory in nature.
*427Op. at 1017. This rule is purportedly derived from Commonwealth v. Bradley, 501 Pa. 25, 459 A.2d 733 (1983), where this court held that a new trial will be granted because of an ex parte communication between a judge and jury only where there is a reasonable likelihood of prejudice. I see no need to further delineate the holding of Bradley, as the majority does by way of its three-part rule, for prejudice will be apparent on the facts of each case. And in any event, the majority’s third requirement, emotional or inflammatory material, is irrelevant to this analysis. If extraneous material going to a central issue in the case is put before a jury, and that material is not otherwise available, the material need not be inflammatory in order for it to be prejudicial. A jury’s deliberations are to be based on evidence produced in court, not on information received from extraneous sources.
But even if one were to agree with the majority’s three-part rule, I cannot agree with the majority’s application of the facts in this case to its rule. Two members of the jury saw and discussed with other members of the jury a television broadcast concerning the lawsuit which they were hearing. The broadcast stated:
The parents of an electrocuted sixteen-year-old are suing USX Corporation. Orlando Dudley died October 4th [1986] when he touched a live wire in the Carrie Furnace Mill. The North Braddock boy was searching for copper wire. His parents claim USX was negligent because it did not warn of electrical dangers. They say the company should have posted danger signs after another boy lost a hand and part of his foot in a similar 1984 electrocution there. A lawsuit on that incident is being heard now in Allegheny County Court.
This news broadcast which the jurors heard and discussed concerned precisely what they were not permitted to hear at trial, for the trial court had granted a motion in limine excluding evidence of injuries on USX property subsequent to the accident involving Carter.
The extraneous material heard by some of the jurors and discussed by all of them is plainly inflammatory, for it *428involves an even worse injury to a child occurring on the corporation’s property in similar circumstances, and it invites the invalid logic that any doubt as to the defendant’s negligence is removed when, after the accident in this case, another similar accident occurred which the company did nothing to prevent. In fact, the inflammatory nature of this information is precisely why the trial court, correctly, excluded it from evidence.
I would expand the rule of Bradley (dealing only with ex-parte communications between the court and juries), and hold simply that a new trial is required if a jury has received extraneous information that is reasonably likely to prejudice a party. Beyond that, I would affirm Superior Court’s grant of a new trial.
Finally, I do not believe that the attorney for USX seemingly acquiesced, as the majority puts it, to the trial court’s refusal to poll the jury. The court refused counsel’s request to poll the jury and stated that the request may be moot after the verdict was returned. I understand this ruling to be that the matter of polling the jury would be adjudicated, if at all, after the verdict was returned.
NIX, C.J., and McDERMOTT, J., join this dissenting opinion.