Court Opinion

ID: 9559730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:34:44.220224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:11:35.859503
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur, but since I am not prepared to subscribe to all the reasons set out by Mr. Justice CROCKETT, I shall add language which will serve to limit my reasons. The hypothetical question was not accurately nor artfully drawn but the fact that it called for answer as to what “you” would charge as a practical nurse instead of asking what would be the reasonable charge could not under the circumstances be prejudicial. Certainly, it must be assumed that Mrs. Hopkins was charging and would charge the reasonable going rate. The jury must have so considered it. We cannot ask for perfection. The time of the courts, of counsel and juries is too valuable to be reversing cases on trivia. I do not see that the answer to the hypothetical question could have been prejudicial.
Even if a hypothetical question calls for an answer within the ken of the jury because it deals with common facts of life, it can do no harm. If the value of hourly rates of day labor, for instance, is known to the jury, how can it harm if a person testifies as to that? I doubt whether the rate of pay for a practical nurse in the community is a fact that can be assumed to be known to the people generally in that community. If so, giving that portion of that community which sits on the jury, evidence of a fact which they already assumingly know can do no harm. The right to a jury trial does not mean that the jury cannot be permitted to pass on *642a fact presumably within its knowledge without benefit of evidence thereon.
I think some technical objections could have been urged to support a contention that performance of services for James Madsen at his special instance and request would not permit evidence of services rendered to his wife, Priscilla. I am not prepared to say that the conclusion of the main opinion that the common law and, for that matter, the statutory duty of support of the wife by the husband may not in this case have been drawn into the scope of “his special request”, as applicable to services of the same nature performed for the wife since there was such close connection and propinquity of the services to both. They may be considered as a unit. But I register a caveat. It may be only in a case such as this where the services are rendered to both spouses at the same time and as a unit that both may be covered by an allegation of performance at the special request of one spouse unless it is alleged that services to both were performed at the request of the spouse sought to be held. I doubt whether one could show services only to the wife or to both during different periods under an allegation that services were rendered at the special instance of one spouse. I should think in such event the defendant might be mislead unless in each case he is under obligation to move to make the complaint more definite in that regard absent which the defendant waives the matter.
I agree that services performed by others in assisting respondent were under the facts of this case performed for and on behalf of respondent and to aid her.