Court Opinion

ID: 9449441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:12:27.82824+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:50.382211
License: Public Domain

J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The principal controversy between the parties was whether or not the plaintiff’s physical and mental disabilities were caused by the accident in 1957. However “tenuous” the basis for this may appear to this court upon review of the record, and I do not agree that it was tenuous, the plaintiff was entitled to have the issue passed upon by a jury. The majority concedes the failure of the charge properly to marshal the evidence on this issue for the jury. On this point, plaintiff’s counsel objected and tendered an instruction to the court, thus bringing squarely to the court’s attention the inadequacy of the charge. The fact that the issue was drawn to the jury’s attention by counsels’ fight to include or exclude evidence on the issue instead of excusing the inadequacy of the charge, only compounds it.
The size of the verdict — too small if the plaintiff’s physical and mental disabilities were caused or aggravated by the accident — and too large if they were not — strongly suggests that the jury did *498not understand the issue. Error in a charge need not be by a direct misleading of the jury; it may be, as I think it was in this instance, from a neglect and refusal to lead the jury on the chief issue. In the absence of an adequate charge, we have no right to speculate on whether or not the jury was misled. A charge which correctly gives an abstract statement of the law, but which does not apply the law to the facts of the case, is misleading and prejudicial. Cf. Lachman v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 160 F.2d 496 (4 Cir. 1947).