Court Opinion

ID: 9574769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:07:56.04451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:35.977794
License: Public Domain

PARKER, J.,
dissenting. The trial judge’s totally irrelevant statement about automobile liability insurance in his charge to the jury is set forth in the majority opinion.
Centuries ago the son of David, king in Jerusalem, wrote “there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, Verse 9. So far as a diligent search by myself and my law clerk discloses the quoted part of the charge is a new thing under the sun. I am fortified in my opinion by the fact that the majority opinion and the briefs of counsel cite nothing like it from the thousands of volumes of reported cases from the Courts of the lands where the English tongue is spoken.
*455The trial judge charged the jury that they, the defendant, and all other persons in North Carolina, who own and operate automobiles, were required to have automobile liability insurance or post a bond, and then specifically charged, “premiums are determined upon the losses and liabilities suffered by insurance companies, which we all must bear.”
The majority opinion states this was not prejudicial, because the judge charged before and after this specific statement about premiums not to let insurance enter into their verdict, and because “the effect of one accident on any juror’s future insurance premium would be too insignificant, it seems to us, to overcome the judge’s positive instructions as to the rule of damages, and that insurance had nothing to do with the case.” To this reasoning, I do not agree.
What the trial judge charged the jury about the determination of the size of the insurance premiums was prejudicial to plaintiffs, in my opinion, and nothing he said before and after that specific statement about premiums could undo the damage done them. S. v. Canipe, 240 N.C. 60, 81 S.E. 2d 173.
What was the probable effect of the judge’s charge in respect to the determination of the size of premiums for automobile liability insurance on the minds of the jury? The majority opinion states the effect of the one case here would be too insignificant to effect their verdict. My mind reaches a different conclusion. I think the probable effect was highly prejudicial to plaintiffs, because the jury would probably believe that to award plaintiffs substantial damages or any damages at all might tend to increase the size of the premiums they would be required to pay under our State statute for automobile liability insurance to operate their automobiles, and, therefore, might probably cause them to award plaintiffs nothing as damages, which they in fact didi. The reluctance of people to pay insurance premiums increased in size is known to all.
Justice Walker said for the Court in Withers v. Lane, 144 N.C. 184, 56 S.E. 855: “The judge should be the embodiment of even and exact justice. He should at all times be on the alert, lest, in an unguarded moment, something be incautiously said or done to shake the wavering balance which, as a minister of justice, he is supposed, figuratively speaking, to hold in his hands. Every suitor is entitled by the law to have his cause considered with the ‘cold neutrality of the impartial judge’ and the equally unbiased mind of a properly instructed jury. This right can neither be denied nor abridged.”
*456I am confident the learned and experienced trial judge thought what he said about insurance in his charge was not prejudicial or irrelevant.
I vote for a new trial.
Moose, J., concurs in dissent.