Allers v. Riley

I dissent from the majority opinion.

Reversing the jury’s verdict which was arrived at following four days of trial and seven hours of deliberation is no insignificant matter. It should never be done based on purely academic notions of technical irregularity which had no bearing on the outcome of the case. Yet, that is exactly what the majority has done in this case.

The defendant complains because the jury, in its conscientious effort to resolve the issues in this case on their merits, referred to the dictionary for a definition of proximate cause. However, the only discrepancy between the…