Court Opinion

ID: 9731338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:42:22.310381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:17.084308
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I join the court’s judgment and nearly all of its opinion and write separately only to point out what should be clear from our holding: that what remains of the rule of District of Columbia v. White, 442 A.2d 159 (D.C.1982), in this jurisdiction is essentially a formality. Henceforth White will apply only where the parties have urged a special verdict instruction but the trial judge, for reasons of his own, refuses to give it.1 I have difficulty imagining that ever happening, but the prospect is so slight in any event that I think we have today repudiated White. Indeed, many of the decisions the court cites in support of the estoppel rule we adopt explicitly reject the rule of White.2
*611Nevertheless, I am not convinced we are acting outside our authority as a division by today’s holding, and the result we reach is the right one. A party has it within his or her means — by requesting a special verdict — to insure that a finding of negligence rests upon a theory supported by the evidence, and absent such a request there is no unfairness in assuming that juries rest their conclusions on theories founded in the evidence. I also agree that White’s demise, for all practical purposes, was forecast — hence putting prudent attorneys on notice not to oppose a special verdict in these circumstances — by our decisions beginning with District of Columbia v. Jackson, 451 A.2d 867 (D.C.1982), discussed by the court ante, at 608-609.

. The court hypothesizes a situation where the defendant requests a special verdict but the judge refuses it, presumably on objection by the plaintiff. Instances where the defense and not the plaintiff would request a special verdict instruction seem to me so rare as to be nonexistent.

. E.g., Reese v. Cradit, 12 Ariz.App. 233, 238, 469 P.2d 467, 472 (1970) (accepting as "better rule" principle that general verdict will stand if evidence on one count is sufficient to sustain verdict): Moore v. Jewel Tea Co., 46 Ill.2d 288, 294, 263 N.E.2d 103, 106 (1970) (citing same rule as "settled law”); Anderson v. West, 270 S.C. 184, 187, 241 S.E.2d 551, 553 (1978) ("we hold that where a jury returns a general verdict involving *611two or more issues and its verdict is supported as to at least one issue, the verdict will not be reversed"); Orr v. Crowder, 173 W.Va. 335, 315 S.E.2d 593, 607 (1983).