Court Opinion

ID: 9700984
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:57:04.173826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:51.183298
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno :
At the end of the Court’s charge to the jury in this case the Trial Judge asked plaintiff’s counsel: “Mr. Brennan, what have I omitted or misstated or should be corrected?” The jury brought in a verdict for the defendant and the plaintiff has appealed for a new trial, complaining that the charge of the Court was inadequate and misleading. This Court has refused a new trial asserting that if there was anything inadequate and misleading in the charge, plaintiff’s counsel should have so indicated when asked about it, and that his failure to do so precludes him now from bringing up the subject again.
The Majority seems to be of the impression that the question put by the Trial Judge to plaintiff’s counsel acted like magic and that it brought perfection to what was imperfection, that it supplied substance for what was missing, and that it provided clarification for what was ambiguous. The Majority Opinion says that a new trial will not be granted “where the complaining party was invited to suggest additions to the charge and remained silent.”
I fail to see the justice or logic of such a ruling. For a judge to ask counsel if he has omitted anything, or if he has misstated anything, or if he has made any *358error which should be corrected is like a school teacher asking her pupils at the end of a lesson of instruction if she has made any mistakes, if she mispronounced words, if she employed the wrong phraseology, and if she perhaps used the wrong book. Who should know better than the teacher what the correct lesson should be? And who should know better than the judge what the law is?
The slightest suggestion of a suspicion seems to whisper into my ear that some judges ask questions similar to the one quoted above, not for the purpose of being corrected but for the purpose of assuring themselves that they may now sleep without a corrugating care, in the awareness that if they blundered in charging the jury there will be but little chance of reversal because the appellate court will say that the judge very magnanimously invited the lawyer to make corrections, to offer additions, and to recommend alterations . but that the lawyer failed to take advantage of such magnanimity. On the contrary the lawyer remained silent, that is, he sat by, taking a chance on the verdict, and that he may not, therefore, now complain, etc, etc.1
It might be interesting to inquire in this case why the Trial Judge asked for corrections only of the plain*359tiff’s attorney. Was there no possibility that he might have erred in presenting the defendant’s case? And of what use was the question put to plaintiff’s counsel anyway? It can happen and it does happen, and it was true in this case, that the error may be of such a character that even a correction or explanation will not cure the defect. In such a situation the indicated question may be likened to a cowcatcher on a locomotive travelling backwards. Such a cowcatcher can do little to sweep from the track what has already wrecked the train.
The fault in the Trial Judge’s charge here was not simply a matter of misstatement or one of omission. It was a continuing error. For the Judge to have corrected his mistake would have necessitated his charging the. jury practically de novo. The defect in the charge lay in the fact that the Judge failed to weave into his instructions the law of negligence as it applied to the particular circumstances of the case. In Hess v. Mumma, 136 Pa. Superior Ct. 58, 65, the Superior Court reversed where the Trial Judge failed to integrate the law and the testimony: “We think that the instructions were too meager to supply the jury with the proper legal method for determining the issues of negligence and contributory negligence. True, the trial judge defined those terms, but he did, not give the jury any guide for applying them to the facts of the case, as they might be found by the jury. The jury should have, been informed what conduct on the part of defendant would, under the evidence, have constituted negligence . . .” At least in the Hess case the Trial Judge defined the. term of negligence. Here, nothing.
The learned Trial Judge said to the jury: “Now, the plaintiff in this case is charging the defendant, Miss DiSanzo -. . . with negligence. She says that Miss DiSanzo .-. . did nut operate her automobile on-this occasion in *360as careful a manner as a reasonably, prudent person should have operated that automobile, under all of the circumstances that existed here. If Miss DiSanzo did operate her automobile as a reasonably, prudent person would have been expected to do under these circumstances, then there is no right of action here. There is no case for the plaintiff and your verdict should be for the defendant.”
It would not be very helpful to the master of a ship traversing an unknown sea to be supplied with geographical and meteorological data but to be denied the use of a compass. Nowhere in the charge did the Trial Judge explain how a reasonably prudent person should have operated the car “under these circumstances.” Nowhere did the Trial Judge tell the jury just what, objectively, could have been regarded as negligence on the part of the defendant. Jurors cannot take an abstract principle of law and stand it up, like a measuring rod, against a pyramid of evidence and determine, from the point at which the rod ends, whether negligence has or has not been made out.
A jury which is hungry for instruction on how to discharge its duty properly is left with its appetite singularly unsatisfied merely to be told: “Practically the only question on liability is whether Miss DiSanzo was operating her automobile as a reasonably, prudent person would have been expected to do at this time and under all of the conditions that prevailed.” The jury might have wanted to know what a “reasonably prudent person” does or does not do. They would certainly have welcomed a description of this mythical personage who, in the words of Horace, stalks through all our decisions “complete in himself, polished and well-rounded.”
The record shows that the defendant could have been found guilty of negligence in ignoring the hazard *361of driving at an excessive speed over a wet pavement in the rain, of driving pell-mell over a pavement beset with drainage sewers and depressed surfaces, or of continuing to drive recklessly after having been apprised of a dangerous situation in the highway. There is nothing in the charge which would enlighten the jury on the standard of care they should apply in considering the defendant’s actions as she drove under the conditions testified to. In fact, in the whole charge one does not even find a definition of negligence!
The Majority Opinion, in affirming the refusal of a new trial, does not analyze the Trial Judge’s charge, but does devote considerable space to narrating what the plaintiff, the defendant, and the other two car passengers did before they even got to the ear. The Majority Opinion informs us how these four people decided to spend a weekend together, how three of them travelled by train from Pittsburgh to Eochester, how the four of them had dinner at a hotel in Eochester, how they drove to the Sons of Italy Club in Ellwood City where they danced and consumed drinks and pizza pie. I find this narrative very interesting and I would like to tarry at the pizza pie counter, but I would have been more enlightened on the reasons as to why the Majority believes that the Trial Judge’s charge was perfect if the Majority had lingered a moment or two on the fact that the Judge in a negligence ease failed to define negligence!
While the Trial Judge did not believe it important in a negligence case to define negligence he did find time to expatiate on the subject of contributory negligence. He instructed the jury that if they found that the plaintiff, Frances Giorgianni, failed to warn the defendant to reduce the speed of her car, Miss Giorgi-anni would be guilty of contributory negligence and could not recover. Miss Giorgianni testified that be*362fore and at tbe time of the happening of the accident she was snoozing on the rear seat of the car. ■ No one disputed this statement. The Trial Judge, however, made no reference to the snoozing evidence in his charge, although it must be apparent that if Miss Giorgianni was snoozing she could not have been aware of the speed of the automobile and would not have been conscious enough to warn the driver about any speed. The Majority Opinion finds nothing wrong about the Trial Judge’s failure to mention the plaintiff’s snoozing, and explains that perhaps the jury did not believe the plaintiff when she said she was snoozing.
The most casual reading of the Court’s charge in this case will reveal it to be so deficient, insofar as the law of negligence is concerned, that I do not doubt that law students studying it may well denominate it the “snoozing case.”

 This is invariably true, even though this Court said in the case of Patterson v. Pittsburgh Rys. Co., 322 Pa. 125, 128: “It is true defendant took only a general exception to the charge, but where, as here, the case calls loudly for such instructions, the failure to give them must be regarded as basic and fundamental error. Inadequacy of a charge may be taken advantage of on general exception where the instructions omitted are vital to a proper conception by the jury of the fundamental principles of law involved (DiPietro v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 315 Pa. 209), and the inadequacy is just as basic where, in a case like the present, the legally established methods of determining the factual question involved are not explained to the jury.”