Court Opinion

ID: 9636878
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:46:47.373046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:50.600041
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Me. Justice Musmanno:
I do not agree with the proposition which has been stated on numerous occasions by this court and repeated in the Majority Opinion here, namely: “A party may not sit by silent, take his chances on a verdict, and, if it is adverse, then complain of matter which, if error, could have been eradicated during the trial if brought to the court’s attention properly and timely.”
The constant repetition of this statement does not make it reasonable any more than the constant reiteration that 2 and 2 makes 5 establishes that particular arithmetical distortion to be correct.
I do not agree with this statement in the Majority Opinion because it makes of a court trial something in the nature of an athletic contest, a chess game, or *115perhaps a good-natured rivalry at cards. A trial has bat one object, or should have but one object, and that is the ascertainment of truth and the production of justice. To say that a new trial should not be granted, if a major error has been committed, only because the lawyer did not object, is like saying that a sick person should not be given additional treatment and should be allowed to die if the doctor erred in his original diagnosis and prescribed the wrong medicine.
The rule quoted by the Majority is wrong for many other reasons. If the Trial Judge did not perceive the error he committed, why should the lawyer be penalized for failing to see it? Moreover, there are some errors of such a serious character that no eraser can wipe them out and no instruction can eradicate them from the minds of the jury.
The Trial Judge in this case said to the jury: “All the claim here is that this defendant was slightly remiss in Ms duties to this plaintiff at the time the accident occurred, and as a result of his laxness or remission or inattention, and so forth, that had he been alert he would have seen him on the road, and he didn’t see him and he ran him down, but there is no claim here that he wanted to hurt him.”
This is not a statement of law; it is an argument for the defendant. There is nothing in the record which would justify the assertion that the plaintiff’s claim was that the defendant was only “slightly remiss.” The plaintiff’s contention was that the defendant was negligent — grossly negligent — in running down a 73-year old man. For the Trial Judge to say that the plaintiff was charging the defendant only with a slight remissness meant either that the Judge was being sardonic at the expense of the plaintiff or that in his opinion there had been no real negligence shown— only a slight inattention, a remissness, a laxness, a little oversight. The Jury, in view of that statement *116coming from the supreme authority in the courtroom, the Judge, could easily have concluded that the meager fault attributed to the defendant by the Judge did not measure up to the definition of negligence as given elsewhere in the charge.
The Trial Judge’s error was basic and fundamental and entitled the plaintiff to the new trial which was ordered by the reviewing court below.