Court Opinion

ID: 9636662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:37:16.480011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:47.805694
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Bell:
Mr. Justice Stern has made an important analysis and review of cases pertaining to new trials in a learned opinion in almost all of which I concur. He *645has wisely, it seems to me, impressed upon trial courts the desirability of stating in detail the exact reasons for which a new trial is granted. However, in this case a new trial was granted because “the interests of justice require it”; and I would affirm on that ground alone.
A trial court is a court of justice in whose conscience and sense of justice we should repose the utmost confidence and trust. A trial judge sometimes senses from the manner of testifying, or from little incidents that happen in a courtroom during the trial, things which an appellate court reading a cold bare record cannot possibly detect. He may believe or be convinced that (one or more) witnesses are lying, or exaggerate or distort to such an extent as to be unworthy of belief, or for some other reason their testimony is unreliable, or that a party’s case is fabricated out of the whole cloth— yet he does not wish to stigmatize the witness (or witnesses) and so he grants a new trial “because the interest of justice requires it.” Under such circumstances how is an appellate court in a position or qualified to say that the trial judge abused his discretion?
I would, therefore, hold that where a trial judge who sees and hears the witnesses grants a new trial, not for an error of law or because the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, but solely because of his conscientious conviction that the interest of justice requires it, an appellate court will not, in the absence of fraud or collusion, reverse such action. This view is supported, I believe, by both reason and authority: Weinfeld v. Funk, 342 Pa. 160, 20 A. 2d 206; Kerr v. Hofer, 341 Pa. 47, 17 A. 2d 886.