Court Opinion

ID: 9710968
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:21:36.307236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:01.465164
License: Public Domain

SHERAN, Chief Justice,
concurring specially.
I concur with the result, but with these reservations:
The evidence in this case is only marginally adequate to support a finding that Mrs. O’Laughlin’s collapse on the morning of January 8, 1973, was an effect of carbon monoxide. Dr. Spagnolo testified that it was, upon the assumption that carbon monoxide was significantly present in the home where she resided at the time she fell. Dr. Fulton Holtby, a registered professional engineer with 40 years’ experience as a teacher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technology, at the University of Minnesota, testified, on the basis of postaccident investigation and a hypothetical question, that in his opinion, on January 8, 1973, there was a dangerous quantity of carbon monoxide in the O’Laughlin home. Effective cross-examination served to greatly weaken the underpinnings of Dr. Spagnolo’s opinion, but not quite enough, in my view, to make the issue of causation one of law.
Even more troublesome, the jury found that plaintiffs themselves were negligent but that their negligence was not a proximate cause of the accident. Given the trial *833context in which these jury findings were made, it is argued that the jury intended a finding to the effect that (a) plaintiffs were negligent in permitting the venting system for the gas burner to become clogged with foreign materials, which could have resulted in the presence of carbon monoxide in the home on January 8, 1973, and (b) this negligence was not the proximate cause of the accident, because Mrs. O’Laughlin’s collapse was not attributable to carbon monoxide. However, while I think that this interpretation of the jury’s finding is highly probable, it is insufficiently certain, in my judgment, to justify denial of a new trial on this ground.