testimony concerning rocks falling on earlier occasions on very highway where accident occurred held admissible because it “tends to prove that the movement of equipment on the haul road created a danger of accidents like that suffered by [plaintiff]”
How later courts described this case
- testimony concerning rocks falling on earlier occasions on very highway where accident occurred held admissible because it “tends to prove that the movement of equipment on the haul road created a danger of accidents like that suffered by [plaintiff]”
- when a trial judge’s ruling is correct, it will be upheld on appeal even if the judge’s reasons for the ruling are erroneous
- “[w]here the ruling of the trial judge is correct on any ground it will be upheld, even though his [or her] reasons for the ruling may have been erroneous.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
HOLMAN, J.,
concurring.
The disagreement between the majority and dissenting opinions is whether the trial court was guilty of reversible error when it would not allow an engineer to testify that, in his opinion, the rock which killed decedent had been between dual tires and that it had flown from between such tires when it entered decedent’s vehicle. The following testimony (virtually all of which came from the expert) was allowed by the trial court to go to the jury:
1) the width of the rock;
2) the width of the space between the dual tires of the truck, which some evidence indicated passed decedent’s vehicle at the time of the accident;
3) that the space between the tires and the width of the rock were the same;
4) that the dark marks on two sides of the rock were rubber marks;
5) that the rock was flat from wear on a third side;
6) that the chrome at the top of the windshield and the rod supporting the sun visor were bent upward above the level of the top of the windshield ;
7) that the rock was on a rising trajectory when it entered the vehicle “as if it had started at the ground and was rising upward”;
8) that dual tires pick up rocks and throw them and that this is why some trucks have “rock bars” installed between their dual tires.
*367 Under such circumstances, I am not very concerned about the fine legal problem of whether the expert should be allowed to testify that the rock was thrown through the windshield by the dual wheels of a truck. The witness was allowed to show the jury in detail exactly how the defendant claimed the accident occurred and to use his expertise in explaining why it was so contended. The important part of his testimony was that by which he used his expertise to show the jury how the rock had to have been on a rising-trajectory for the damage to the vehicle to have occurred as it did. In view of all this, it is my opinion that there is insufficient likelihood that the trial court’s refusal to allow the witness to express his ultimate opinion had any effect on the outcome of the case, and, therefore, a reversal is not justified.
Howell, J., concurs in this opinion.