Court Opinion

ID: 9456916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:05:54.411871+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:08.520528
License: Public Domain

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge:
I dissent from the denial of the petition for rehearing and wish to observe that on reconsideration I dissent from the judgment of reversal.
I concurred in the result of reversal when first announced by the court because I was of the view appellee did not lay an adequate basis to allow the trial judge to rule that appellant’s conduct fell within the purview of D.C.Code § 35-1312 as that statute is applied and administered by the cognizant officials — a ruling that must be made before the existence of criminal sanctions can be put before the jury on an evidentiary basis.
On further examination I find that an adequate basis was presented by appellee, but objected to by appellant.1 Hence I *1206agree with the contention in the petition for rehearing that a new trial in this case would be both an injustice to the appel-lee and an unnecessary waste of the trial court resources which have already been devoted to this litigation.
Material focused in the petition for rehearing reinforces the view I previously expressed, that the error which the majority found in the instructions was a slip of no consequence. The instructions had been discussed with the judge in chambers at length. The motion for new trial filed by appellant did not mention the circumstance that the judge omitted the word “knowingly” in this particular sentence when he gave the oral instruction to the jury. As I have already indicated, the concept of “knowingly” pervades the instruction in any real sense.
Instead of reversing the judgment on the ground of prejudicial error, I would be more inclined to upbraid counsel who presses for reversal on a point he regarded as of little consequence at the trial.2 He does not claim that the omission of the word “knowingly” was sought by appellee. Apparently he could not legitimately have made such a claim, since appellee’s requested instruction contained the word knowingly, as set forth in its petition for rehearing.3
The use of the time of our trial judges and juries is a valuable resource. We should not hesitate to use it in order to serve the interest of justice, and overcome substantial prejudice. In my view no showing of substantial prejudice has been made in this case. All that is involved is a slip of the tongue, which was not called to the attention of the trial judge, and was more than offset by the remainder of the charge, which avoided any possibility of actual prejudice to appellant.
This discussion is to be read in the context of the opinion I filed May 28, 1970, stating that the instruction as a whole made it clear that fraudulent or dishonest conduct within the terms of the bond must be knowing, willful and intentional, and that it was proper for a jury considering the materiality of a particular misrepresentation or omission in a civil action to have before them the information that such conduct, if appropriately established, would constitute a violation of a criminal statute.
I would affirm the judgment, and hence respectfully dissent.

. I undertook to read the entire testimony of the Deputy Superintendent of Insurance, called as a witness by appellee, only a small portion of which was reprinted in the Joint Appendix filed on appeal.
The transcript reveals that appellee did attempt to elicit from the Deputy Superintendent an explanation of the policy of the Department with regard to the conduct in issue. Appellee offered to *1206show that the Department treated this as an extremely serious matter, jeopardizing the license of the company, because Dandridge had withheld material information which the Department viewed as a fraudulent act under the statute. The reason that this line of inquiry was not pursued was that counsel for appellant objected, and this objection was sustained by the trial court. Counsel for appellant argued, “He wants to say there would have been something done about this had Mr. Moore [Vice President and Secretary of Imperial] not done something. What in the world has that got do with the issue in this case?” (Tr. 534) Under these circumstances appellant cannot be heard to complain of the failure to lay a predicate for placing § 35-1312 before the jury.

. We should guard against the use of “subsequent logical parsing” to “uncover possible confusions and misapprehensions in the printed record that were not fairly present in the aura of the court room. * * * The sport of syntax should not be indulged when trial counsel did not make timely objection except in a clear case of prejudice.” McGill v. United States, 121 U.S.App.D.C. 179, 185, 348 F.2d 791, 797 (1965).

. Counsel for appellee states he was not aware until the opinion issued that the requested instruction was not part of the record before the court. If appellant’s counsel wished to bring this matter up on appeal it was his duty to search out the relevant portions of the trial record so as to put fairly and completely to the appellate court a point being presented to it more or Jess on a “plain error” basis.