Adolphus M. Sanderlin v. Gary K. Martin

(dissenting) :

I applaud the move by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to eliminate the practice in Virginia of instructing juries in negligence cases as to the burden of persuasion in terms of a presumption of due care, but I cannot join my brothers in concluding that the District Court’s charge, considered as a whole, was prejudicial in any way to the plaintiff.

In the hands of the court, presumptions are useful things in fixing and shifting the burden of going forward with evidence. Some presumptions serve other offices. Such presumptions as that of death after seven years of unexplained…