Court Opinion

ID: 9860384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:19:59.984023+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:21:46.473791
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from division III of the majority opinion in which it is held that the trial court’s error does not require a reversal. I believe the error does demand a reversal.
It plainly was not the truth for defense counsel to suggest to the jury that the defendant here stood to lose $200,000 under plaintiff’s claim for damages. Defendant stood to lose nothing and counsel knew it. The deceptive nature of the statement should not be tolerated on the claim that the error was harmless or was cured by the trial court’s instruction. Under disciplinary rule 7 — 102(A)(5) a lawyer shall not “knowingly make a false statement of law or fact.” The suggestion of defense counsel in the argument here, no matter how it is excused, was a false statement of fact. I do not think it is enough to criticize or condemn such a practice. Simple honesty demands that the practice should be absolutely prohibited.
Defendant here attempts to justify the argument on a claim that it merely makes the jury believe, though mistakenly, what the law would have them believe: insur-*104anee has nothing to do with the case. I have the gravest doubts that this justification was the real reason for the argument. It is much easier to believe that the argument’s purpose was to trick the jury into believing there was no insurance in this case. To so mislead jurors is demeaning to them and to the judicial process. They should be treated with more honesty and forthrightness if we are to keep the courts, and the law itself, from having a bad name.
If the argument is tolerated there is no place to stop. We have said a plaintiff’s lawyer, under these circumstances, might be excused if they retaliate by answering in jury argument that defendant will not personally be required to pay. Mongar v. Barnard, 248 Iowa 899, 906-07, 82 N.W.2d 765, 770-71 (1957). Under the guise of trial court discretion would the majority here allow a plaintiff’s counsel to be similarly deceptive? What if plaintiff’s counsel suggested to a jury there is in fact insurance when he knows there is not?
The tactics employed here should be absolutely and totally driven from our trial procedure. Because the argument was false and deceptive it cries out for an absolute reversal, not a mere disapproval.