Court Opinion

ID: 9573947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:00:52.296936+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:46.687696
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
I heartily endorse the application of Harrison v. Taylor, 115 Idaho 588, 768 P.2d 1321 (1989), to this and all other cases. The abolition of the open and obvious danger defense is the only appropriate step to be taken by this Court after the legislature passed the comparative negligence statutes in 1971. A comparative negligence regime cannot countenance a defense that allows for the complete and absolute exoneration of those who may be most at fault for the creation or maintenance of a dangerous condition.
While I concur in the majority’s application of Harrison, I cannot concur in the majority’s conclusion as to certain evidentiary issues which remain as poorly resolved in this Court as in the court below. These issues should be left for the trial court to determine during the new trial, not for an appellate court to determine prematurely from a necessarily limited record on appeal. The majority recognizes that these issues “may reoccur in a new trial” (see at 698, 791 P.2d at 1277), but I can divine no reason for foreclosing the litigants from approaching the new trial with a tabula rasa, unfettered by evidentiary rulings made during the consideration by an appellate court of an old and discarded proceeding.
The majority uses I.C. § 1-205 to support its foray into three evidentiary issues. That statute states that “the court shall pass upon and determine all the questions of law involved in the case presented upon such appeal, and necessary to the final determination of the case.” I.C. § 1-205 (emphasis added). This provision is the crutch used by the majority to reach evidentiary issues. But the issues involve the exclusion or admission of evidence, and are *705neither properly characterized as questions of law, nor characterized as necessary to the final determination of the case. The majority recognizes this, because instead of applying the standard of free review (which is the proper standard of review for questions of law), the majority refers to the clear abuse of discretion standard. See at 698, 791 P.2d at 1277, where the majority cites to State v. Smith. The correct standard of review should be no review at all, because the evidentiary rulings of the trial court may be mixed rulings of law and fact that may not reoccur during the new trial, and are not necessary to the .final determination of the appeal. I address the three evidentiary issues raised by the majority in turn.
The first issue is whether the trial court properly excluded expert testimony offered by the Bakers to discuss the accident location. The majority describes what the expert would have testified to in this manner: “We consider first the exclusion of expert testimony offered by the Bakers to explain why there had not been prior accidents at the location where Doris was injured.” At 698, 791 P.2d at 1277. In the same paragraph, the paragraph that purportedly applies the clear abuse of discretion standard of review to the trial court’s evidentiary rulings, the majority concludes that “the trial court did allow the Bakers to present evidence of two other accidents that had occurred on the ramp prior to Doris’s fall.” Id. There either were, or were not, other accidents at the same location where Doris was injured. The answer to that question is for determination at trial, and certainly not for an appellate court to determine before trial!
The second issue is the offer of expert testimony concerning the safety issues that must be addressed by Shavers while the store was being remodeled. The majority excludes this evidence, on the ground that “there were no workmen working in the store, nor was there any construction going on at the time of the accident.” At 698, 791 P.2d at 1277. That fact says absolutely nothing about the value of the expert’s offered testimony! The remodeling of the store may have been interrupted for any number of days, but the workers’ tools, ramps, etc., would still be in place at the store, and the store managers or owners would still be charged with keeping the premises safe. Once again, the question of whether the store was in the process of being remodeled is a question of fact to be determined at the trial, and most assuredly is not a question of law for an appellate court to determine before trial.
The third evidentiary issue concerns the injured plaintiff’s shoes. It appears from the majority opinion that the shoes were admitted into evidence, but that the plaintiff was not allowed to exhibit her ability to walk in them. Hence the shoes were admitted as an exhibit wholly unrelated to the feet of their owner and her capabilities of navigation. Obviously the shoes had been fitted to her by some store, perhaps Shavers. This is not the case of a lady choosing to walk over rough or slippery terrain in high heels, but rather the sad culmination of a lady gone shopping, who while browsing about in a store encountered an unmarked change in the flooring’s supposed state of being level. The heels were obviously offered by defendant in order to suggest to the jury that the plaintiff was thereby and somehow negligent, leaving the jury to any conjecture which might come to mind by which she may have been careless regarding a pitfall concerning which there were no precautions. This is more farfetched than anything previously seen. Wearing heels into a store does not a case of negligence make. Nor is there any authority offered for such an outrageous proposition. But, if the shoes are offered into evidence, at the very least the trial court should not admit the shoes without allowing the owner of the shoes to show the jury that she was in no way impeded in her ability to walk about therein. Such might have enlivened an otherwise dull trial. A desperate defendant might well attempt the tactic, but an astute district court would have to be shown some plausible justification for succumbing to it. Here there is none. Here the Idaho system of administering justice will take a consid*706erable downward plunge in the eyes of the women who read the Court’s opinion, and likely their menfolk as well, of which I am one. Neither as a justice nor as an ordinary person of reason am I able to join an opinion which upholds the admission of the shoes and all in the same breath upholds the trial court telling the plaintiff, “No, you will not be allowed to display to the jury that you encounter no difficulty in walking with them.”
The majority seeks to ameliorate its meandering with a discussion of this third issue by pointing out that the harm of admitting the shoes was itself ameliorated by the admission of testimony concerning the plaintiff's ability to walk and dance in heels: “In light of these circumstances, we do not believe the trial court abused its discretion in excluding the demonstration.” At 699, 791 P.2d at 1278 (emphasis added). How this suffices as a reasonable explanation escapes me, but clearly portrays the frivolity of this rhetorical exercise undertaken by the majority in attempting to justify the unjustifiable.
It is grossly inappropriate for this Court to muddy the waters of the new trial by discussing old evidentiary issues and old circumstances. Rather the Court should simply declare the error, and remand for a new trial. Idaho Code § 1-205 neither requires nor allows such appellate interference.