Court Opinion

ID: 9761745
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:52:59.920932+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:25.997894
License: Public Domain

■Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
- The ordering of a new trial in this case represents the acme in meaningless superfluity and the apex in blatant futility. The new trial is so unnecessary, so uncalled for, it subjects the litigating parties to such unrequired worry and expenditure of money, time and effort, that I can only regard the mandate of the Court in this case as a travesty on the processes of justice.
Thomas Carney and William McIntyre, young men, were killed in an accident which occurred nine years ago (May, 1959), when the automobile in which they were riding collided, with a locomotive athwart the highway on- which they were traveling. The administratrices of the estates of the deceased youths brought actions of . trespass against the Pennsylvania Railroad Company which owned the fatal locomotive. The jury returned verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs. The defendant railroad company appealed, and this Court, speaking through the majority, has edicted a new trial. Eor. a reason which defies established law, elementary logic, and fundamental common sense.
The jury believed the evidence that the defendant railroad company was negligent in the manner that its locomotive moved across the highway to become the executioners of the two youthful decedents. The trial lasted.two weeks, the attorneys were very able men, the. .judge presided with learning, patience, and sound judgment. - Yet the majority orders a new trial. The cost to the Commonwealth and to the litigants for a new trial will be enormous. . The transcript of the record is made up of three encyclopedic-sized volumes; *499photos and sketches make up another volume, the combined printed briefs number over 175 pages.
The jury found that the defendant was negligent and the appellant does not press for judgment n.o.v. Why the new trial? In the tidal wave of evidence establishing the defendant’s negligence, the majority finds the bloated bubble of a technicality; in the overwhelming avalanche of proof of the plaintiffs’ case, the majority finds a broken pebble of supposed incongruity; in the charging cavalry of facts, the majority finds a broken horseshoe of lopsided theory. And so, the case must be re-tried, and the whole story of the tragedy must be relived, the locomotive must shoot out info the highway, the automobile must crash into it, its passengers must be hurtled out to the street to death and mangling injury.
Why? The majority says that the trial court erred in allowing a police officer to testify to what an eyewitness of the tragedy told him. There is not the slightest reason to believe that, even without this testimony, the jury would have brought in a different verdict. The record demonstrates that the plaintiffs proved that the railroad locomotive (painted black) rolled, in the dead of dark night, without lights, without sounding a bell, without signalling its approach in any manner, into a public highway, and that the members of the train crew saw the decedents’ car approaching and did nothing to avert the fatal encounter. There was also evidence that the conduct of those operating the locomotive constituted a violation of the railroad’s safety rules. It cannot be argued that the verdict for the plaintiffs was against the weight of the evidence.
Emilio Fietta, sergeant of police of the City of Philadelphia, testified that he arrived at the scene of the accident within five minutes after it occurred. He testified that “the engine headlight was out. There was *500no light on the headlight.” Then, in narrating what had occurred he described the bodies lying on the street and then said that a man “came running up to me, very agitated, and he informed me as to what he had seen.”
' ' Defendant’s counsel objected at this point and later, after the judge had ruled on the objection, the officer testified: “A. Well, the engine headlight was out. There was no light on the headlight. And, of course, after I got out of the car, a gentleman run up to me and excitedly said to me, that this car, this engine, had come out fast and that it had no lights on it. And this again called it to my attention. But I explained to the man that I had a job to do, for him to stand on the side, that I wanted to get these victims to the hospital.”
The majority says that it was improper to allow Sergeant Fietta to relate what the eyewitness said. The eyewitness’s statement came strictly within the res gestae rule which allows, as evidence, spoken declarations made by persons who are actors in, or spectators of, a dramatic event which forces spontaneous utterance. Fietta testified: “Q. How soon after you got there did this man come up and give you this piece of information? A. Immediately I stopped, he came running .over to me. Q. Was anybody else present at the time he made the statement, besides you and him? A. Just me. I was the first man there. He came over to me. I assumed the fact that I had stripes on and I am a sergeant meant authority to him.”
In Allen v. Mack, 345 Pa. 407, this Court said: “In a res gestae declaration the exciting event speaks through the impulsive words of a participant or onlooker. The apparent condition of the declarant’s mind when the declaration is made is the test of the latter’s admissibility as part of the res gestae. To make the declaration admissible the state of the de*501clarant’s mind as induced by the shock of the occurrence must be such as to integrate his spontaneous declaration exclusively with the occurrence itself.”
The majority cites this case and quotes from its definition of res gestae, but then apparently overlooks its clear language. The Majority Opinion says: “The facts must indicate that the declarant actually witnessed the event to which his statements relate.” The Majority Opinion not only treats lightly the very authority it cites but completely disregards the testimony of Sergeant Fietta because he specifically said that the declarant had witnessed the accident, namely, “He informed me as to what he had seen” (Emphasis supplied.)
The majority introduces into its discussion a wholly inapplicable case, Beck v. Dye, 200 Wash. 1. The very passage the majority quotes from in that case shows that its facts are as far from those in the case at bar as the state of Washington is from Pennsylvania. I quote from the Beck case, as it appears in the Majority Opinion: “It is purely a matter of speculation whether they themselves observed the condition of the signal light or were even in the vicinity when appellant drove into the intersection. For aught that the record discloses, they may have been repeating merely what others had told them, or perchance reconstructing the initial occurrence from what they finally saw.”
But it is not speculation as to whether the declarant in this case saw that the locomotive was without illumination and was traveling speedily. Fietta specifically said, and I repeat: “He came running up to me very agitated. And he informed me as to what he had seen” (Emphasis supplied).
The majority argues that it is possible the “declarant was repeating what others had told him.” Of course, it is possible. Anything is possible in this sometimes *502topsy-turvy world, but as appellate judges we decide cases not on dreamed-up possibilities but on what is before us. To dispute that the declarant did see the locomotive coming out “very fast” and that it had no lights, is to call on shadows to dispute the authenticated record.
Then the majority wants to make a point of the fact that the declarant was unidentified. How does that change the situation? Whether he had one name or a thousand names is of no consequence.
The majority would introduce into the res gestae rule an ingredient which would practically wipe out the efficacy of the rule. It says that an unknown bystander’s declaration must not be accepted because he does not come into court “in order to test the accuracy of the observations upon which it was based.” If the declarant could always be brought into court, there would be no need for the res gestae formula. Often the declaration comes from a person now deceased, or is swallowed up in the crowd or cannot be located. The majority misapprehends the quintessential nature of res gestae. It is not the person that becomes the evidence, it is the involuntary, spontaneous ejaculation, it is the outcry, or outburst that writes itself into the controverted episode as spinning automobile wheels write their story into the dirt of the road and speak for themselves in an ensuing lawsuit.
The admissibility of the controverted declaration does not depend on who the declarant was. Wigmore, recognized authority on Evidence, clarifies this proposition: “That nervous excitement which renders an utterance admissible may exist equally for a mere bystander as well as for the injured or injuring person, and therefore the utterances of either, concerning what they observed, are equally admissible.” (Wigmore on Evidence, 2d Ed. Vol. 3, §1755.) (Emphasis supplied.)
*503Thus, the anonymity of the declarant in the case at bar is wholly irrelevant, because his utterance is not regarded as the statement of a particular individual. It is merely one of the phenomena of the violent episode just as are the screeching of brakes, the skidding of tires, the cries of the injured. While the res gestae declaration is the product of vocal cords, it is an objective manifestation as much as the noise of a rifle shot. The res gestae declaration is the product of a person’s shock, fright or amazement which spontaneously asserts itself just as lightning writes in the sky the message of the electric crash between rain clouds, while thunder growls the audible acknowledgment of that celestial encounter.
The declaration by the unknown witness to Sergeant Fietta is as much a part of this case as the photographs of the railroad tracks, and cannot be eliminated without derailing the train of evidence.
To send this case back for re-trial would constitute an act of injustice. Thomas Carney and William McIntyre were killed nine years ago. It is time to let their souls rest, and it is time that other cases waiting trial for many years should not be held up further while this litigation is being re-litigated, for no sensible purpose that I can see.
The wheels of the machinery of the law must be lubricated with common sense; otherwise they will grind to a halt. Those concerned with the administration of justice are concerned over the manner in which those wheels are slowing up in Philadelphia. We, as the Supreme Court of the State, should make every effort to accelerate the speed with which those wheels turn, not to pour sand into them, as the Majority Opinion does in ordering this wholly unnecessary, fantastically un-needed, and redundantly superfluous new trial.
I dissent.