Court Opinion

ID: 9645948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:40:50.817923+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:33.462859
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON PETITION TO REHEAR
Defendant complains that the Court of Appeals and this Court gave consideration only to the pre-trial issues relied upon by defendant and overlooked issues that occurred during the trial.
We elect to address those issues rather than relate their history in the appellate courts and why they were not heretofore fully articulated.
I.
Defendant contends that the trial judge committed prejudicial error in allowing Dr. Dabbs to examine plaintiff’s wrist, “in full view and hearing of the jury in open court over defendant’s objection ... eliciting undue sympathy for plaintiff.”
Mrs. Goss who sustained multiple injuries on 18 October 1980, was treated at Rhea County Hospital by a doctor other than Dr. Dabbs. In December 1980 she saw Dr. Dabbs for the first time. He testified that at that time he felt her fractured right wrist was her most significant injury because it had not healed properly. He examined x-rays that revealed she had a malunion of the bone which in his opinion would cause future difficulty. He decided that she needed bone surgery, and since he was a general surgeon he referred her to Dr. Pratt, an orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Dabbs testified that Dr. Pratt performed surgery on Mrs. Goss’s right wrist, removing part of the bone. While he did not assist at the surgery, he saw her during her hospitalization following Dr. Pratt’s surgery and received reports from Dr. Pratt.
Against this background plaintiff’s counsel asked Dr. Dabbs if, in his opinion, Mrs. Goss had sustained any permanent disability to her wrist. Defendant’s counsel objected on the ground that a proper foundation had not been established.
As plaintiffs direct examination and defendant’s objections proceeded, somewhat inartfully on both sides, the trial judge interceded and noted that plaintiff had ex*827hibited some obvious but unspecified abnormality in her right wrist which the jury had seen. He then asked Dr. Dabbs if he had seen her wrist since the operation. Dr. Dabbs responded that he had “seen her for a lot of things but I never specifically examined her wrist to determine.” Implicitly, Dr. Dabbs was explaining that he had not examined her and her wrist to specifically determine whether or not she had any permanent disability.
From that point forward at the trial the transcript reads as follows:
THE COURT: Let him look at it now.
MR. PECTOL: Can you do that, doctor? Can you take a look at the wrist?
THE WITNESS: Sure, be happy to.
MR. FRITZ: Your Honor, I object to this type of procedure because he has already testified that orthopedics is not his specific type of specialty.
THE COURT: I will let you cross examine him on that.
EXAMINATION BY MR. PECTOL
Plaintiffs counsel then proceeded with the direct examination of Dr. Dabbs who was allowed to testify in material part as follows:
She has a scar over her forearm down close to the wrist and a part of that bone is missing. That is called the ulnar bone. The ulnar bone and the radius bone make up one’s face of the wrist joint. She has a rather severe degree of limitation of her wrist in all motions, and it is a very painful, very tender joint so — and I can testify with reasonable degree of medical certainty that this is going to be permanent.
MR. RAMSEY: Your Honor, we would like to enter an objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
The transcript provides no description of how the examination of Mrs. Goss’s wrist was conducted, the duration thereof or any other details. Defendant’s counsel made no contemporaneous objection to the examination itself, his objection being directed solely to the fact that Dr. Dabbs was not an orthopedic specialist. The basis upon which defendant now rests his complaint, to-wit: eliciting undue sympathy of the jury could have been removed by a timely objection requesting that the examination take place out of the presence of the jury. If the trial judge had refused that request, then counsel could have inserted into the record a description of the examination, the time required and any other matters pertinent to a consideration by the appellate courts of whether the examination could have aroused undue sympathy. As it is, the record shows only that the jurors apparently had a short look at a healed operative scar almost four years after the operation was performed, an operation which had left the patient with limitations of motion in the wrist joint. On this record, we are unable to make any determination other than that the brief display of the wrist could hardly inflame the passions of the most tender-hearted juror. Defendant has waived consideration of this issue. See Layne v. Speight, 529 S.W.2d 209 (Tenn.1975) and Bass & Co. v. Parker, 208 Tenn. 38, 343 S.W.2d 879 (1961).
Defendant relies upon Gulf Refining Co. v. Frazier, 15 Tenn.App. 662 (1933). Nothing occurred in this case comparable to the examination and expression of pain by plaintiff in Frazier.
II.
Defendant’s second and third trial issues are interrelated and will be dealt with as one issue.
Defendant states the issues as follows: (1) whether the trial court erred in giving an instruction that coerced a juror’s opinion after the jury reported deadlocked; and (2) whether the trial court erred in denying defendant’s motion for a new trial in face of the juror affidavit that the instruction adversely influenced his deliberations.
The jury retired to begin its deliberations at 2:27 p.m. Forty-three minutes later, at 3:10 p.m. the jury returned to the courtroom where the following occurred.
THE COURT: Have you arrived at a verdict, gentlemen of the jury?
MR. COCHRAN: No, sir.
*828THE COURT: You’ve got to go back out. Don’t tell me anything more. Just go back out. It’s early in the day. You all go back out.
MR. COCHRAN: All right.
MR. PECTOL: Your Honor—
THE COURT: Do you have a question you want to ask?
MR. COCHRAN: No, sir. We don’t have any questions.
THE COURT: Don’t tell me how you might be split. Just go back out.
MR. COCHRAN: I don’t think it will do any good to go back out, Your Honor.
THE COURT: It’s early in the day yet. Can’t do anything else in the rain anyway.
(Whereupon the jury retired at 3:11 p.m.)
(Whereupon the jury returned into open court at 3:42 p.m., whereupon, the following occurred:)
THE COURT: Mr. Foreman—
MR. COCHRAN: We find for the plaintiff.
THE COURT: And what do you set her damages at?
MR. COCHRAN: Forty-five.
THE COURT: You find for the plaintiff and set her damages at forty-five thousand, so say you all? If so, raise your right hand.
It is a unanimous verdict. Thank you very much. You are at liberty to leave.
Defendant made no objection at the trial to the action of the trial judge nor did defendant request the Kersey charge. In the motion for a new trial, defendant presented the affidavit of one juror to the effect that the jury was deadlocked before Judge Greer’s instruction to return, with the implication that the deadlock was caused by affiant’s fixed opinion. The affidavit went on to say that affiant interpreted Judge Greer’s instruction as being mandatory in nature “in that the juror’s had to agree on a verdict” and that affiant “would not have changed his opinion without being instructed to do so by Judge Greer.”
“[A] juror may not testify ... as to the effect of anything upon his or any other juror’s mind or emotions as influencing him to assent to or dissent from the verdict or indictment or concerning his mental processes in connection therewith-” State v. Blackwell, 664 S.W.2d 686 (Tenn.1984). The three exceptions to that rule, extraneous prejudicial information, outside influence, and an antecedent agreement to be bound by a quotient or majority result were obviously not involved in this case. Thus, the juror affidavit cannot be considered.
Defendant also contends that the trial judge should have either declared a mistrial or given the charge approved in Kersey v. State, 525 S.W.2d 139 (Tenn.1975), as the replacement for the Allen or dynamite charge.
The trial judge did not give any charge to the jury. At 3:10 p.m., on a rainy day, after the jury had been out of the courtroom only forty-three minutes, the trial judge said, in effect you must return to the jury room for further deliberation, no more, no less. In the time frame in which the trial judge acted, and in consideration of the length of the trial and the nature of the issues to be determined by the jury, we find nothing coercive about the trial judge’s action and no deviation from the requirements of Kersey or Vanderbilt University v. Steely, 566 S.W.2d 853 (Tenn. 1978).
The petition to rehear is denied.