Court Opinion

ID: 9461645
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:20:24.219979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:11.250093
License: Public Domain

THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
I am satisfied that the “crashworthiness” charge was not in error, and I join in the narrow conclusion reached by the majority that judgment for the defendant is correct on the basis of counsel’s waiver. I have serious reservations about the assumption of risk portion of the majority opinion and its apparent assumption that the evidence justified some kind of charge on that defense. Nevertheless, plaintiff well knew that the trial judge intended to submit the case to the jury upon a general charge and general verdict. Indeed, plaintiff tendered that form of submission. At the charge conference, plaintiff seems to have abandoned his earlier motion for an instructed verdict, which was grounded on the argument that the record contained no substantial evidence of knowledge on his part concerning the cab’s dangerous propensity literally to shear and collapse upon an occupant at low speed impact. Was this propensity so obvious that the jury was- entitled to charge plaintiff, a man whose education stopped at the eighth grade, with the requisite awareness of the risk, see item Two of the trial court’s charge on assumed risk quoted, in Judge Gee’s opinion, supra, p. 637, simply on the basis of his experience as a driver of this type of truck and his general familiarity with heavy vehicles? The trial court thought so in overruling plaintiff’s motion for instructed verdict. The defendant apparently thinks so, for it makes no effort to refute plaintiff’s no evidence point on appeal. For me the problem is most difficult. See Restatement (Second), Torts § 402A, comments g and i; cf. Williams v. Brasea, Inc., 5 Cir. 1974, 497 F.2d 67, 78-79, on rehearing 5 Cir. 1975, No. 72-3623 at slip p. 5688.
But it demands no further discussion in this case, for the plaintiff neither asserted the point by way of objection to the charge, nor did he ask that the trial court submit the case upon special interrogatories.1 In a motion for new trial, the plaintiff assigned as error the overruling of his motion for instructed verdict. On appeal, he continues to request a new trial on that basis as well as others. Yet, in view of plaintiff’s willingness to take his chances with the jury on a general submission, his ambivalence and vagueness below with respect to the charge (see F.R.Civ.P. 51), and the not-insubstantial possibility that the jury simply failed to find the cab unreasonably defective, thus pretermitting assumption of risk as the critical issue, I am constrained to resolve my doubts in favor of the judgment, and to conserve my sympathy. If this court is wrong on the substantive law, the Kentucky courts may freely say so. Furthermore, my reservations as to the Kentucky law sug*641gested by the majority may ultimately prove not well taken.2 The judgment is correct, however, on independent procedural grounds, and on that basis I concur.

. See F.R.Civ.P. 49. If plaintiff (or defendant) had requested special interrogatories, but the trial court denied such request, the ruling would have been reviewable on appeal for abuse of discretion. See Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corp., 5 Cir. 1974, 493 F.2d 1076, 1100. Of course, I could not intimate any view on how the issue would be decided.

. My views on the matter of assumption of risk in products cases are generally contained in comment n to § 402A, Restatement (Second), Torts, which the Supreme Court of Texas seemingly rejected in the Henderson case, from which Judge Gee quotes in footnote 14 of his opinion, supra. The reported Kentucky opinions, discussed by Judge Gee, I find of no real aid toward resolving how that state would handle the “reasonableness” riddle in products liability assumed risk situations, i. e., whether Kentucky’s courts would relegate “reasonable” assumption of risk to the status of a last clear chance-like doctrine available to rescuers but few others.