Court Opinion

ID: 9790531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:54:28.767827+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:30.016825
License: Public Domain

Springer, J.,
concurring:
I write in concurrence because I wish to stress the complete freedom from any prejudicial error to be found in the record of *539this case. I disagree heartily with the dissent’s conjecture that the verdict was the “product of jury confusion.” It is clear to me that the jury simply did not believe the father’s revised version of the event told at trial, namely that the child climbed up on the hot metal and remained there until he was severely burned. More likely and more believable is the father’s first story, told at the hospital, that he, the father, placed the child on the device.
From my point of view, the jury could even have believed a more dire version of how the little boy was burned, but this is not the point. The point is that the plaintiff failed to carry the burden of proving to the jury fault on the part of McDonalds, and little more has to be said.
The dissent mentions something about a higher standard of care being required by McDonalds in this case, but the trial judge was not asked to instruct the jury on this point, even if it had some validity. Mention is also made of the amusement device’s being an “enticement,” but again I see that no instructions were requested by the plaintiff on this point. These questions were not raised, as far as I can determine, in this appeal.
The instruction found objectionable by the dissent is a standard one on occupier’s liability, and the instruction could not in any way that I can perceive “invite the jury to speculate.”
The dissent finds error in the court’s not instructing the jury that the child was incapable of contributory negligence as a matter of law. As pointed out in the majority, there was no attempt under Quillian to obtain an adjudication establishing the supposed incapacity of the child. Appellant was certainly not, under our case, entitled to an instruction that all children were conclusively or even presumptively free from contributory negligence.
There are certainly various disparate ways of looking at the facts in this case. One way is that the child innocently climbed aboard the merry-go-round and remained there until he was seriously burned. Another, contrary view is that the child was placed on the device by his father (as the father told medical attendants at the hospital) and was held there until he was seriously burned. The jury could have believed either version and even could have believed that the father burned the child in some other fashion that had no connection at all with McDonalds; for the father, rather clearly, was not believed by the jury.
The real point here is that it really does not matter what the jury believed; they were entitled not to believe anything presented to them. The child and his representatives had the burden of proving to the jury’s satisfaction that negligence on the part of McDonald’s caused the child’s injuries, rather than other means.
I cannot see any possibility that a portion of a general instruction relating to obvious conditions of danger could have “invited *540an erroneous analysis of duty to the prejudice of the injured child,” or could, even if error, have had any prejudicial effect of any kind.
I have put down these views, as said, to point to the exceptionally error-free nature of the trial of this case. Whether the jury found that there was no evidence to support negligent conduct on the part of McDonalds or that the case was dishonestly contrived by the father, it was certainly justified in concluding that the plaintiff had not sustained the burden of proof.