State Highway Department v. Handley
State Highway Department v. Handley
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting. I dissent from the ruling made by the majority of the court in Division 1 of the opinion and from the judgment of reversal in this case. I am aware, of course, of the well established rule that the court should not charge the jury in a contradictory manner so as to leave the jury in a confused position of having to pick and choose between a correct and an incorrect charge. But in this case, an examination of the entire charge together with a reading of the charge complained of in its proper context leaves, in my opinion, no doubt that prior to the enactment of the Appellate Practice Act of 1965, as here interpreted and applied, the charge in this case would not have been error. Prior to this decision it has always been the law in Georgia that in ascertaining whether a portion of the charge excepted to is error it must be read in its context, that is, in connection with what had been charged before and what was charged thereafter, and while a portion of the charge when read alone may seem to be error, if upon examination of the whole charge, it does not appear that the jury could have been misled or confused, the charge will not be cause for the grant of a new trial merely because it was, in some small particular, inaccurate or incomplete. Nor was it prior to the decision rendered by the majority in this case “. . . incumbent upon the judge, in instructing the jury with respect to different legal propositions that they are to consider, [in rendering their verdict] to repeat, in connection with the instruction on each proposition, all of the other qualifications and elements that they are to consider in reaching their verdict. It is sufficient if all of the essential qualifications and elements are covered in the charge as a whole.” Spainhour v. Nolind, 97 Ga. App. 362, 365 (103 SE2d 154). See also in this connection, Sims v. Martin, 33 Ga. App. 486, 487 (126 SE 872); Neville v. National Life &c. Ins. Co., 36 Ga. App. 8 (1) (135 SE 315); General Oil Co. v. Crowe, 54 Ga. App. 139, 147 (187 SE 221); Southern R. Co. v. Gale, 103 Ga. App. 87, 90 (118 SE2d 742); Terry v. Buffington, 11 Ga. 337, 343; Livingston v. Taylor, 132 Ga. 1 (1) (63 SE 694); Ellis v. Britt, 181 Ga. 442, 447 (182 SE 596).
It most certainly was not the purpose of the section of the Appellate Practice Act, above referred to, to change or modify in any way the substantive law so as to require this court or the Supreme Court to hold that a charge which had not, prior to the enactment of that section of the Appellate Practice Act, been held to be cause for reversal. But, this is the undoubted effect of the ruling which the court now makes, and in so ruling, I think it commits error.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Nichols and Judge Deen concur in this dissent.
Opinion of the Court
1. In this condemnation case the court erred in charging the jury as follows: “You will determine what amount represents a value of the property taken by the State Highway Department for which you will return a verdict, and if you find consequential damages to the remaining property, you will add whatever you may find as consequential damages to the amount you find that represents the value of the property taken by the Highway Department, and you will add whatever
2. There was no issue made in the case respecting inconvenience to the condemnee or to the occupant in the dwelling located on the property involved, and the trial court did not err in refusing the condemnor’s request to charge the jury that the condemnee could not recover for mere inconvenience except insofar as inconvenience adversely affected the value of the condemnee’s remaining property. For the court to have so charged would have merely resulted in injecting into the case to the confusion of the jury an issue not made by the pleadings or the evidence.
Judgment reversed.
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