Court Opinion

ID: 9454197
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:38:57.482017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:00.562888
License: Public Domain

LUMBARD, Chief Judge
(dissenting) :
I dissent.
The exclusion of two important items of evidence which tend to defeat plaintiff Vaccaro’s case, or at the least show contributory negligence on his part, was so prejudicial that the verdict of the court cannot stand. These erroneous exclusions of contemporaneous accident reports were crucial since the reports contradicted the testimony of Vaccaro given at trial more than seven years after the accident.
Vaccaro claimed the accident occurred as he was stepping down from a three foot high stow of drums onto an 18 inch high bench in order to descend to the deck. He testified that as he stepped onto the bench it slipped away, causing him to lose his balance and fall, striking his elbow and back on the drums. This testimony was given on May 17, 1967, more than seven years since he sustained his injuries on January 16, 1960. There was no other eyewitness to the accident who could support or refute plaintiff’s testimony except Vincent Salzano, a subordinate fellow carpenter. But plaintiff did not call Salzano to the stand. Instead portions of his deposition were introduced which corroborated the fact that the bench had been at the location of the accident, but wholly failed to provide an account of how the accident occurred.
For the reasons stated by Judge Waterman it was clear error for the trial judge to refuse to admit the Marine Casualty Investigation Report, which was made pursuant to United States Army regulations in the regular course of the Army’s business. The Report included the notes made by Army timekeeper Carl Puccio concerning a report made by Vaccaro himself immediately after the accident. The report indicated that Vaccaro had fallen not as the result of having stepped on the bench but rather because he had slipped on some ice located on the top of one of the drums.
This error was compounded by the treatment of the February 2, 1960 affidavit of Carl Puccio which affirmed that his notes taken the day of the accident from Vaccaro were accurate. At the trial the judge received the affidavit together with the attached notes made by Piiccio. But several weeks later, in writing his opinion, the trial judge rejected the affidavit on the mistaken *1140theory that it had been made in preparation for litigation.
After rejecting these two valuable pieces of documentary evidence the trial court awarded the plaintiff a grossly excessive recovery of $15,000, despite the fact that Vaccaro was absent from his job for only 12 days after the accident and has been working ever since.
Both the Investigation Report and Puccio’s affidavit contained contemporaneous accounts of the accident which conflicted with Vaccaro’s testimony at trial. Had the trial judge admitted these documents and accorded them full consideration they might well have materially undermined the credibility of Vaccaro in the court’s mind. The trial judge’s offhand remark in his opinion that “in any event” he would have reached the same result had the documents been admitted does not purge his errors of their prejudicial effect. It is quite evident that the judge was in no frame of mind to give proper weight to this evidence in view of his comment during the trial that the documents constituted “rank * * * hearsay.” In any event, an appellate court is not compelled to accept as conclusive a trial judge’s opinion concerning the credibility of oral testimony when the probity of this testimony is cast in serious doubt by documentary evidence, see Orvis v. Higgins, 180 F.2d 537, 539 (2d Cir.), cert. denied 340 U.S. 810, 71 S.Ct. 37, 95 L.Ed. 595 (1950), particularly where as here this evidence was not adequately considered by the trial judge.
Surely it is difficult enough for shipowners to defend against suits of this sort, based entirely on the claimant’s testimony, when the prospect of a substantial verdict may provide an incentive for an imaginative reconstruction of all that happened long ago and all that has been suffered since.
Therefore I conclude that the trial judge’s errors were so prejudicial that the judgment should be set aside and a new trial ordered.