Burns v. Shields

Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant Herman E. Burns has appealed from a $1500 jury’s verdict in his favor. His case arose out of a rear end automobile collision, for which the appellee and defendant in the trial court, Marion James Shields, admitted his liability, leaving only the issue of damages for the jury’s decision. Mr. Shields has offered to pay the amount of the judgment.

Although Mr. Burns was represented by counsel in the trial court, he appeared in this Court in his own behalf, contending that a number of errors were committed at the trial. In a consolidated fashion these charges of error are: 1) improper or inadequate voir dire examination of the jurors; 2) failure to transcribe the opening and closing statements of counsel; 3) various omissions in the trial court’s instructions to the jury; 4) inadequacy of the verdict; 5) failure to compute interest on the judgment from the date of the accident; 6) failure to strike an examining physician’s testimony as conflicting and biased; 7) conflicting rulings on admission of hearsay testimony concerning medical treatment he received and claimed property damage; 8) permitting to be incorporated in a question a perjurious statement and improper inferences concerning letters appellant sent to Baltimore City officials; and 9) improper cross-examination concerning appellant’s diminished earning capacity. ⁵³⁹ Because points 1 through 5 were not raised and decided in the trial court there exists no action of that court for us to review. Maryland Rule 885. Points 6 through 9 are associated with noted objections in the trial and therefore will be individually discussed below.

Point 6 questions the qualification of Dr. Legum, an examining physician, to testify at the instance of the defendant since he was employed by the Diamond Cab Company, owner of the cab being driven by the plaintiff at the time of the accident. Mr. Burns says that a cross-examination inquiry which suggested Dr. Legum acted as physician for Diamond Cab was perjurious and was intended to buttress the medical testimony of another doctor in order to discredit appellant. He contends that because of this suggestion Dr. Legum’s testimony should have been stricken. We can only note that this was not the objection registered in the trial court.

Appellant’s attorney objected successfully to a minor discrepancy entering the record but he made no motion to strike all or any portion of the doctor’s testimony. Again there is nothing before us upon which to rule. Point 7 is also not reviewable because the only objections made to the admission of evidence as being hearsay were correctly sustained in his favor, leaving nothing for us to correct. Hadder v. State, 238 Md. 341, 352 , 209 A. 2d 70 (1965).

Point 8 similarly terminated in appellant’s favor when the trial judge at appellant’s request cut off questioning on cross-examination concerning