Court Opinion

ID: 9768074
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:41:21.325054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:36.453971
License: Public Domain

BARDGETT, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I agree that plaintiff made a submissible case; however, I disagree with that portion of the principal opinion holding that it was reversible error to give instruction No. 3.
*224In this master-servant case, contributory negligence constituted no defense. MAI does not contain a verdict-directing instruction specifically designed for the non-FELA master-servant cases. The only place where a verdict-directing instruction for a master-servant case appears in MAI is under the heading of Federal Employees’ Liability Act as MAI 24.01 and it is basically this instruction the court gave as instruction No. 3. The terminology employed in MAI 24.01 for submitting the question of safe place to work, i. e., “defendant failed to provide reasonably safe conditions for work”, is obviously rather general. Nevertheless, it was adopted by the court as the correct method of submitting the issue. I do not believe it can be said to constitute a misdirection to the jury in this case and it does submit the ultimate issue. MAI, 2d edition, page L, “How to use this book”, under the heading “IF NO MISSOURI APPROVED INSTRUCTION IS AVAILABLE”, says “In these cases counsel will need to research the law, find the elements required to prove the case and then submit them as ultimate issues in the same manner as issues are submitted in Missouri Approved Instructions”. In my opinion, instruction No. 3 did precisely this by employing the language found in MAI 24.01 to submit the ultimate issue of unsafe place to work and was not error.
Instruction No. 3 also used the language, “such negligence directly resulted in whole or in part in injury to plaintiff”. The principal opinion holds this to be error in a non-FELA case, relying on decisions in FELA cases holding that slight negligence is sufficient in FELA cases to support recovery. It seems to me that the question of whether the language, “such negligence directly resulted in whole or in part . . . ” constitutes error ought to be determined by deciding whether ordinary jurors would interpret this language differently than they would the phrase, “directly caused or directly contributed to cause”. In my opinion both phrases would mean the same thing to a jury of laymen. No one argued that plaintiff was entitled to recover if the jury found that defendant was just slightly negligent, and the jury was properly instructed on burden of proof by instruction No. 2 (MAI 3.01).
I believe the trial court did follow the philosophy of MAI and that the jury was not misdirected. For these reasons I respectfully dissent.