Court Opinion

ID: 9475577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:31:39.175221+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:47.810271
License: Public Domain

K.K. HALL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree that the portion of the district court’s jury instructions relating to “state of the art” knowledge was a mistatement of the South Carolina law of implied warranty. I cannot accept, however, the majority’s conclusion that the error was of sufficient magnitude to require reversal of a judgment entered after an otherwise fair and full jury trial.
It is virtually hornbook law that the applicability of a harmless error standard to mistakes at trial is determined after an appellate examination of the record as a whole. In this instance the defective instruction related only. to the school district’s warranty claim. In a well-reasoned opinion denying the plaintiff’s motion for a new trial, the district court observed that the school district allotted less than one page of its pre-trial brief to the warranty claim while spending sixteen pages on its allegations of negligence.1 The court also stated that it had instructed the jury on breach of warranty despite doubts as to whether the issue had been sufficiently developed to merit submission.
Furthermore, the district court concluded that the asbestos companies had based their trial defense not upon lack of knowledge, but, rather, upon lack of defect. The companies presented evidence which, if believed, demonstrated that the mere presence of asbestos in building materials is not health-threatening. The court expressly found that the “likely explanation for the verdict is that defendants by their evidence made an overwhelming showing that the risk involved to occupants of buildings containing asbestos is ... miniscule_” The majority disregards that significant finding without explanation.
It is true that “merely superimposing correct instructions” does not in itself cure a defective instruction. However, when a subsequent instruction which correctly states the law is considered in conjunction with a judicial determination that the erroneous statement dealt only with a minor claim and that the verdict was otherwise supported by a factual theory unaffected by the error, the cumulative effect inescapably suggests harmless error.
On the available record, a lengthy new trial is simply not warranted by the nature of the error. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.

. The district court noted that the warranty claim appeared to have been raised primarily as a means of confronting a defense by the asbestos companies predicated upon contributory negligence. No such defense was, in fact, ever offered.