Court Opinion

ID: 9704069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:20:51.148282+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:55.873295
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Judge
(dissenting).
I would reverse and remand this case for new trial for the reason that in reaching the decision that the hazards had been increased by means within the control or knowledge of plaintiffs, the trial court expressly recited in its findings that plaintiff Sam Raphtis had experienced three previous fires during his restaurant career and had collected in excess of $46,000 in insurance proceeds. The official fire reports list nonincendiary causes for the three prior fires. The fact that Sam Raphtis had experienced three prior nonincendiary fires does not seem to me to be of any probative value in reaching the conclusion that he and John either set or helped to set the fires in Vermillion. It is undisputed that restaurants have a higher risk of fire than do other businesses. The property was not overinsured. There was evidence of an earlier unexplained incendiary lire in another area of Vermillion. The trial court made no finding as to John's financial status. Since we do not know whether John was living in baronial splendor or with Spartan simplicity, I am not prepared to say that there was little hope that he could stay in business, especially in light of the fact that much of his direct financial obligation was to his brother Sam, who apparently was interested in seeing John succeed in the restaurant business.
Perhaps the trial court would have reached the same result had it not considered the evidence of the three prior fires. Because the trial court did consider this evidence, however, how can we say that the result reached was correct unless we in effect sit as trial judges and weigh the evidence as we think the trial court would have had it not considered the evidence of the prior fires? It is one thing to say that a trial court's findings are not clearly *501erroneous when the evidence upon which the findings were based is probative and admissible; it is quite another thing when in the process of affirming a trial court's findings we disregard evidence specifically included in the findings and which perforce must have been of significance to the court in evaluating all of the evidence. To hold that we should not follow the latter course may be thought to be too narrow a restriction on the scope of appellate review, one that this writer has probably not himself consistently recognized, but nevertheless one that seems necessary if factual questions are to be decided exclusively in the trial courts.