Court Opinion

ID: 9865358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:32:55.472345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:34.754050
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
In the district court the plaintiff recovered verdict and judgment against the defendants, who are plaintiffs in error here.
The action, as originally instituted, was based upon the alleged negligence of the defendants in connection with an automobile collision causing injury to the plaintiff. The answer charged the plaintiff with contributory negligence. These issues of negligence and contributory negligence were the only issues at the time the evidence was taken.
Among the assignments of error is one which in my opinion entitles the defendants to a new trial. It points out the alleged error of the trial court in permitting the doctrine of “the last clear chance.” to be introduced into the case after both sides had announced that they rested and after the witnesses had all been released by the court beyond recall. This change was accomplished at that time by granting the plaintiff leave, over the defendants ’ objction, to amend his replication by interlining the following language: “And alleges that at said time and *372place when the plaintiff was in a position of peril, the defendant, Wendelin, conld and should have observed plaintiff’s position; and by the exercise of ordinary care, could and should have avoided the accident.” This was obviously intended to be in confession and avoidance of the defendants’ allegation that the plaintiff’s own negligence. had contributed to his injury; in other words, it injected for the first time the orthodox counter-defense of “the last clear chance.” Up to that time the plaintiff relied, for defense against the defendants’ charge, upon his claim that he was not himself guilty of contributory negligence. Doubtless the attorneys ’ opening statements to the jury, as well as their interrogation of jurors on the. voir dire, proceeded along the express lines of original negligence of the defendants and contributory negligence of the plaintiff. It is not contended that the “last clear chance ’ ’ doctrine was even hinted at until after the court had finally discharged all the witnesses and an appreciable recess had been taken thereafter by the trial court.
To reinforce the aforesaid interlined amendment of the replication, and thus the additional issue, a corresponding instruction was given to the jury, also over the defendants’ objection. This occurred by adding in the following instruction the concluding words, which I italicize: “Even though you may find that defendant Wendelin was negligent, yet if you find and believe from a preponderance of the evidence that the plaintiff Ross himself was negligent, and that his negligence proximately caused or proximately contributed to the. collision and injury, then and in such event your verdict would be against the plaintiff and for the defendants, unless the defendant Wendelin had the ‘last clear chance’ to avoid the collision as hereafter instructed.”
It will be observed that this change in the pleadings and in the instruction was a deliberate one made as an afterthought with the evident purpose of bringing the case within the principle laid down by this court in Bragdon v. Hexter, 86 Colo. 435, 282 Pac. 568, which unequivo*373cally holds that the “last clear chance” defense must be pleaded if relied upon. This court, there speaking by Mr. Justice Campbell, the present honored Chief Justice, in an opinion without dissent and concurred in by Mr. Justice Burke and four other able judges, says (at page 439): “The last clear chance doctrine, upon which a plaintiff relies, is new matter constituting an affirmative defense to the new matter of contributory negligence set up in the answer. If a plaintiff wishes to avail himself of this defense to counterbalance or nullify the affirmative plea in the answer of contributory negligence, the plaintiff must do so in his replication.” The “last clear chance” doctrine, when invoked, is both logically and as a matter of sound legal practice an affirmative defense in confession and avoidance. Denison, Code Pleading in Colorado (published in 1936), page 420, section 528. The lamented author of this admirable work was formerly a distinguished member of this court, and no mean authority on the subject of pleading.
It needs no argument to demonstrate that in the present instance the raising of the specific issue of “the last clear chance,” in confession and avoidance of contributory negligence, must have prejudiced the defendants because it was belated. The jurors finally had before them the issues of negligence, contributory negligence, and (without notice to them until all the evidence was in) “the last clear chance,” whereas the trial had clearly proceeded on the issues of negligence and contributory negligence alone. No attorney upon whom such a sudden change of procedure is thrust could, by any reasonable criterion of nisi prius practice, handle himself and his case as efficiently in the one. instance as in the other. A trial, to be fair to both sides, must proceed on the pleadings as they are constituted while the parties still have full opportunity to conduct their respective parts of the trial in direct relation to those pleadings and no others; that is to say, when a shift is made in the pleadings, as here, each side should have full opportunity to recall any of *374the witnesses for the purpose of adapting the procedure to every such shift in the pleadings. This the defendants (plaintiffs in error) were unahle to do, through no fault of theirs, and simply because, when the trial of the fact-issues as then constituted by the pleadings had ended, the court had dismissed the witnesses. Issues framed by pleadings are necessarily the framework upon which the evidence must be placed. The purpose is, of course, defeated if a larger framework, suddenly and without previously announced plan or specification, is constructed when there is no opportunity of placing further evidence upon it to accommodate the arbitrary change of issues. In the circumstances presented by the record the jurors could not have failed to be confused by the unexpected alteration of the issues which they were trying during the entire evidence-taking period, and to which, and to which alone, they as laymen had been endeavoring to apply the evidence on the strength of what they had heard in the opening statements and on the voir dire examination. The amendment of the replication was, as it seems to me, fatally late, and the giving of this instruction on the affirmative counter-defense to the charge of the plaintiff’s contributory negligence was, I think, reversible error.
In the light of the foregoing, can it be said that fairness was observed toward the defendants? Let us see whether the procedure here used is conducive to justice.
There was no attempt, on the part of counsel for the plaintiff, at justifying the procedure of the trial court in permitting the vital change in the issues except this short statement in their brief: ‘‘ Counsel must agree that amendments to pleadings can be made at any time within the discretion of the trial court and nearly as a matter of right a litigant is entitled to an amendment to conform to proof. Defendants do not suggest that there was an abuse of that discretion. ’ ’ Counsel are here in error, for the objection is on that very ground.
The majority opinion deals with the matter as follows:
*375“Defendants contend that they were prejudiced by the order of the court permitting the amendment after the testimony was concluded and the witnesses excused. This contention is not sound. All of the evidence concerning the accident and the conduct of the parties, under the disclosed circumstances, which was admissible under the issues as made by the pleadings subsequent to the amendment, was admissible under the issues made by the allegations and denial of negligence and contributory negligence contained in the pleadings prior to the amendment. ’ ’
With all due respect, I suggest that the opinion has missed the real point entirely, even as counsel’s above quoted generality had done.
It is of course axiomatic that a court may, by permitting amendment of pleadings, eliminate mere variances between allegation and proof within the issues as made, for the sake of obviously called-for correction of errors when the evidence innocently turns out to be otherwise than expected. However, I challenge anyone to cite a well-considered authority sustaining on such a ground a radical change of the issues effected — as here: — after both parties have rested their case. No such case has been cited either in the opinion or in the briefs here. I feel confident that there is none. To permit parties to do this would make of universally recognized principles of Colorado code pleading a hollow mockery.
For the reasons stated I think the judgment should be reversed and a new trial had in accordance with accepted rules of procedure. The granting of a new trial of course would permit the plaintiff to litigate freely and fully the “last clear chance” issue. This could thus be done without prejudice to either side and with a fairness to both which was impossible in the trial we are now reviewing. Because the majority of this court, on the contrary, affirms the judgment of the district court, as if fairness and justice had nevertheless been duly administered, I respectfully dissent.