Court Opinion

ID: 9448659
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:42:25.458355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:31.340438
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I agree with Judge WATERMAN’S opinion in so far as it approves various steps taken in this generally well tried case and only part company with him when, at the crucial point of decision, he orders a new trial on grounds to me wholly inadequate. Specifically I agree that there was sufficient evidence to require submission to the jury of the questions of defendant’s negligence, plaintiff’s intestate’s due care, and causation of the latter’s cancerous condition. I also concur in the conclusion holding correct the instruction that the jury might consider defendant’s quick departure from the scene as indicating consciousness of liability. But I cannot agree that Judge Gibson abused his discretion in acting quickly and decisively to correct a misstatement of defense counsel in summation by ordering a showing of the precise facts. In my view we ought to commend him for his action. I am the more convinced of this when I see the concealing and confusing alternative asserted in the opinion to be the proper form of corrective action. Here, as so often, the simple truth is more useful, and less harmful to the parties, than any form of vague apologetics which cover up the actual facts. The defendant’s negligence was gross, the jury’s verdict moderate, and the resulting judgment fair and just. I think appellate interference here is peculiarly regrettable.
Now with respect to the police officer’s report, it should be noted that it was erroneously excluded in the first instance. It was a record made in the ordinary course of police business, and hence was admissible under the Business Records Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1732. This we have just held in a substantially similar case, United States v. New York Foreign Trade Zone Operators, 2 Cir., 304 F.2d 792; and see also Pekelis v. Transcontinental *340& Western Air, Inc., 2 Cir., 187 F.2d 122, 23 A.L.R.2d 1349, certiorari denied Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. v. Pekelis, 341 U.S. 951, 71 S.Ct. 1020, 95 L.Ed. 1374, and McKee v. Jamestown Baking Co., 3 Cir., 198 F.2d 551. Actually the report on its face was very fair and restrained. It recited the general nature of the accident and the statements of the drivers of the two vehicles in actual collision, and then continued with the part excluded on defendant’s objection, viz., “Investigating officers believed that the parked vehicle contributed to the cause of the accident as it was parked on a curve which was blind to the operator of Vehicle #1, Socinski by the snow ridge on his right side of the highway.” It thus was advanced only as an expression of opinion. Moreover, the reporting officers were available for cross-examination. As the statute itself explicitly provides, any question as to the circumstances of the making of the record goes to its weight, but not to its admissibility. See my discussion in United States v. New York Foreign Trade Zone Operators, supra.
When, therefore, defense counsel argued in summation that no officer had said that the parked car was to blame in any way for the accident, this misstatement of fact called for prompt correction by the judge. 6 Wigmore on Evidence §§ 1806, 1807 (3d Ed. 1940) ; Viereck v. United States, 318 U.S. 236, 248, 63 S.Ct. 561, 87 L.Ed. 734. So after objection by plaintiff and colloquy with counsel the judge then admitted the excluded portion of the report. The judge did not act hastily, but only after careful explanation to counsel, who of course objected, but had no alternative suggestion. Again in his charge the judge carefully explained that it was the jury’s findings, not the officers’ opinion, which controlled; and hence he had excluded the statement as being opinion, until he had to admit it to correct the misstatement in argument. Thus he performed his conceded duty to act in what seems to me the most desirable manner, namely, by showing the true facts, and thus disposing of the matter swiftly and without undue emphasis. This was all the more appropriate in view of the original admissibility of the report.
My brothers say, however, that the judge should have required counsel to withdraw the statement, reprimanded him for his deceptive remark, and instructed the jury a,t some length not to be misled by counsel’s statement. This seems to me at once inadequate and excessive. Apparently the jury was never to know the exact facts as to the officers’ opinion. Naturally the jurors would speculate as to what this was all about, and their speculation well might be along quite erroneous lines. At the same time it was clear that defense counsel was being severely reprimanded for something. This might easily make the matter worse in the jury’s guess than it actually was. I submit that this course of reproof based upon concealment of the facts was wholly undesirable and prejudicial to the parties, particularly the defendant, while the course taken by the judge in the exercise of his discretion was admirable.
I am not one who believes jury trial a necessary or fully satisfactory device for settling the vast problems stemming from the automobile accident.1 But while we have it required by the law of the land, I do believe we should allow it to operate without a surfeit of restrictive limitations upon its natural scope. I cannot believe that this dubious reversal does other than cast doubt upon the jury process in this important area of litigation.

. Compare James, The Columbia Study of Compensation for Automobile Accidents: an Unanswered Challenge, 59 Colum.D. Rev. 408 (1959); Leslie, The Saskatchewan Automobile Insurance Act, 44 J.Am. Jud. Soc’y 6 (1960) ; Shumiatcher, The Saskatchewan Automobile Accident Insurance Plan, 20 Law.G-uild Rev. 114 (1960).