Court Opinion

ID: 9809324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:08:42.594318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:33.349545
License: Public Domain

ClabK, O. J.,
dissenting: The dwelling-house of the plaintiff and his personal property therein- were destroyed by fire 6 December, 1920, now three years ago, and the plaintiff alleges this loss was due to a defective spark-arrester on the defendant’s engine, the house being situate just adjacent to defendant’s right of way. The defendant denied that its negligence caused the damage, and this was the sole question at issue. The case was tried upon that issue of fact, and 57 witnesses testified for the plaintiff and 65 for the defendant.
It was a question of fact which could only be settled by testimony of witnesses and the verdict of a jury.
*578. For many hundreds of years issues of fact have been thus settled, and the only burden ever imposed was that the plaintiff must prove his allegation to the satisfaction of the jury, or, in criminal cases, the formula has been the State must prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and this Court has held that “fully satisfied” and “beyond a reasonable doubt” are synonymous. The jury have heard the case for many days and 122 witnesses, and have found there was proof to their unanimous satisfaction that the house was destroyed by fire caused by the negligence of the defendant as alleged in the complaint, and that the plaintiff is entitled to recover of the defendant $4,000.
Some fifteen or twenty years ago some dreamer or idealist conceived the design of splitting up the simple burden which the jury could understand of “fully satisfied” and “by the greater weight of the evidence” and procured this Court to hold, as he had previously persuaded some others to hold, that the burden of proof should be split up, and there then began the installation of the doctrine of the “burden of proof” shifting, and then there was the addition of the “burden of the issue,” and then that these could shift, and then some ingenious and metaphysical word-carpenter added the doctrine of prima facie case and when that could carry the burden of liability to the jury or not, and the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur and the presumption of law and presumption of fact and as to which of these was preponderant, and when each of them should prevail and when they should shift back and when it was requisite to tell the jury as to these different shiftings backwards and forwards. The result has been so to entangle the matter that it is safe to say that there is not a judge presiding in any trial court in North Carolina today who can, with any safety of being affirmed on appeal, charge the jury as to these various weighty matters as to whether the burden of the prima facie case, or the burden of proof, or the burden of the issue or either of the presumptions should shift or exactly when it should shift and at what particular time it should be transferred, and whether and when the party shifting or transferring “should go forward with proof,” and many other equally intelligible refinements.
Instead of the law being simplified, it has been inextricably confused, and it has been made impossible for any judge to assert with certainty that he has complied with these difficult and numerous complicated and embarrassing requirements which have been substituted for the old-fashioned, age-long requirement, which alone juries can understand and do understand, as to which side has the burden of proof. “By the multitude of words counsel has been darkened.”
There has been no statute whatever in North Carolina nor any indication of one laying down a rule requiring these complicated disquisi*579tions to tbe jury, wbicb can bave no effect except to divert attention from tbe matter wbicb tbe jury are to determine. If there is a trial judge in tbis State wbo can be sure tbat be is absolutely and accurately complying witb tbe refinements wbicb can be argued on appeal as to tbe exact time wben tbe burden of tbe issue or tbe burden of proof shall shift, or tbe prima facie case, or tbe presumption, or wben it should shift back, and whether in any case such shifting should be done by tbe greater weight of tbe evidence, or, as was gravely argued recently, whether upon a given state of facts it should shift back upon an even weight of the evidence and not by preponderance — if all these matters are clear to any trial judge, it is very certain tbat there is not a jury of twelve honest, intelligent men wbo can understand them. They cannot spend a lifetime to puzzle them out, nor bave they tbe bulging fees to induce them even to try to do so.
If tbis innovation bad been brought about by any statute there might bave been some clear form of expression prescribed wbicb would enable tbe judges to guess as to tbe various phases of these technicalities and tbe exact time and tbe exact shifting of tbe preponderance of these various matters, and tbe indications tbat Would foreshadow and adumbrate them, and to what extent they may go.
In tbis particular case tbe man’s bouse was destroyed. He has asked for compensation, and a speedy trial was guaranteed by Magna Carta more than seven hundred years ago, but tbe result has been tbat be has been out of bis bouse for more than three years, and up to date tbe matter is still not determined.
While there is but a single question for tbe twelve men to decide, and tbat is whether tbe jury are satisfied by tbe greater weight of tbe evidence tbat bis bouse was burnt by tbe negligence of the' defendant or not, tbe houseless man has now been condemned to go back and go over tbe whole trouble again, though be has put 57 witnesses on the stand and tbe defendant has bad 65 witnesses to testify, and nothing yet is accomplished except court costs and lawyers’ fees.
Such changes in our law should not be invented or introduced by tbe Court, for it is certain tbat no Legislature voicing .the will of tbe people would ever enact such obstructions in tbe administration of justice.
Tbe greatest trouble in tbe introduction of so many technicalities, so many ways to
“Distinguisli and divide a hair betwixt south and southwest side,”
is the enormous and overwhelming advantage it gives wealthy suitors and corporations in delaying trial, making them costly, not only by tbe refinements as to tbe burden of these imperceptible distinctions as to wbo at a given moment is chargeable witb tbe burden upon any given *580point, but by insuring, as in this case, a new trial upon some perfectly immaterial and irrelevant matter which, no matter how it had been charged, according to the new rules, would not have made any difference to the jury who could not have understood such refinements. They are fully satisfied- whether the house was, or was not, burned down by the negligence of the defendant, and to determine that was the sole object of the trial. The jury of “good men and true” was not impaneled to split hairs.
There is also a tendency, notwithstanding the many recent statutes simplifying indictments, to add new requirements of technicalities as in the recent case, where the indictment for buz-glary was verbatim, that which had obtained for ages, but a new technicality was added, without statute, with the result that a negro who entered the room of a white woman and laid his hands upon her at midnight was granted a new trial because of the omission of the word “attempt,” which had never been required before, and for the failure to charge, as the defendant’s counsel insisted, that the jury should have the option to give five different verdicts when upon the evidence only two were possible— guilty or not guilty in manner and form as charged. And this week, whether as a consequence or not, another negro charged with assault upon a white woman, upon trial in an adjoining county, has been “hid out” each night, a sjDectacle never before known in North Carolina.
In the case at bar, being a civil case, the jury, after hearing the testimony of 122 witnesses, found the only material fact, that the plaintiff’s-house had been destroyed by fire set out by the defendant’s engine; and now, after the lapse of three years, he must start over again to present his case, without his house, minus his lawyers’ fees and plus a tremendous bill of costs, and the next judge, possibly • three years hence, may make some slight mistake in charging as to the presumption or the burden of the issue or the burden of proof, or the “going forward with the evidence” at exactly the right time or on the right side, and other matters of that nature. When such technicalities prevail, even the successful party is bankrupted unless very wealthy.
It ought to be the effort of every court, and certainly it is to the interest of the public, that trials should be made speedy, and be decided upon the merits and regardless of technicalities which make always in favor of the side in a civil case which can endure delay and expense, and in criminal matters they invariably work not for the public good nor for the administration of justice, but in behalf of the criminal, especially as to the latter in cases of exploiting a bank (when the sufferers have been the masses, the depositors) and in crimes against women, for as to these two crimes juries rarely misunderstand the evidence, and the demand of astute counsel for additional technicalities is urgent.
*581If the people of North Carolina wish these delays and desire these refinements, which frustrate justice and serve no good end, the change in that direction should be made by statute that we may know it is the will of the people, and not by refinements introduced by technical lawyers who urge them for the immense advantage it gives to a certain set of clients.
Certainly the people of the State have álways evinced the opposite disposition, and Chief Justice Ruffin well said in S. v. Moses, 13 N. C., 463, that “in the criminal law nice objections of this sort were a disease of the law and a reproach to the Bench.” A statute was then passed which the Chief Justice said was “meant to disallow the whole of them” and cut them up by the roots in consequence of a case, among others, in which one convicted of a heinous murder was discharged because the indictment left out the letter “k” in the word “knife” with which, as specified in the cumbrous indictment of that day, it was charged that he had made a wound of a certain depth and width and charged to be of a certain value, with many other refinements, including the allegation that the murderer had been “moved and instigated by the devil” — altogether an indictment of two or three pages for which a later statute, following the English form, has substituted an indictment for murder in three lines, with injury to none, and since then we have had many other statutes simplifying civil procedure and criminal trials.
In this case, three years after the man’s house had been burned down and after a jury who heard 122 witnesses have found the sole fact at issue, that it was destroyed by the negligence of the defendant company, this case ought not to be sent back for a new trial upon a refinement as to shifting the burden of proof, or shifting the burden of the issue, or when it should be shifted, or when to “go forward” with proof and when and by whom this should be done, or any entanglement about the two presumptions, and whether they should carry the case to the jury and res ipsa loquitur, and as to the exact weight and effect to be given to any of these things.
With 122 witnesses the jury must have understood this case, and they have found, upon what they believe was the weight of the evidence, according to custom and practice of centuries, their verdict, and the judgment imposed thereon by the learned judge who tried this case should be sustained. The courts should not “bore with a gimlet,” but cases should be tried and decided upon their merits.
If any judge has yielded to the “refinements,” so called, which impede the administration of justice, it is no estoppel. He can overrule his own errors as we overruled the greatest of our predecessors on this Bench when they, in Hoke v. Henderson, 15 N. C., 1, made the mistake *582of bolding a public office was private property. After that decision had endured, to the great inconvenience of the public, for more than 70 years and been cited with approval in 60 cases, this Court overruled it.
All courts are fallible and often overrule their own errors. This is to their credit, not to their discredit. Justice only is eternal. Her only should we seek after and follow.