Court Opinion

ID: 9564175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:55:38.862723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:15.725607
License: Public Domain

Gunter, Justice,
concurring specially. I concur in the judgment of affirmance but not with all that is said in the opinion by the court.
To me, a motion for a partial new trial is a brand new appellate vehicle. I have never before understood that after a jury trial, a jury verdict, and a judgment, a party to the case could successfully *170move for a partial new trial. I have always heretofore understood that a losing party must move for a new trial of the whole matter and run the risk of getting just that. It has never before occurred to me that a litigant could elect to retain the sweet result of the whole and reject the bitter result of the whole. I did not know that our practice and procedure would permit such an election by a party to an action.
I do not believe that the Childs and Boone cases, cited in the majority opinion, stand for the proposition that a litigant can make a motion for a partial new trial. Those two cases say that a trial court and an appellate court in this state, upon consideration of a motion for a total new trial, can order a partial retrial of certain issues in a case if those issues are severable from the other issues in the case that were correctly determined. I see and I make a distinction between a court-ordered retrial on certain issues that are determined by a court to be severable and a motion for a partial new trial by a litigant who contends that he should have a retrial on certain issues that he deems to be severable from the other issues in the case.
I doubt very much the wisdom and the practicality of a holding by this court that will permit a litigant, under our practice and procedure, to make a motion for a partial new trial.
However, I agree that the judgment of the court affirming the trial court’s judgment in this case is correct.