Rogers v. Benedict

(after stating the facts). In Schattilly v. Yonker, 347 Mich 660, we considered the dangers of wholesale adoption of self-serving and argumentative requests to charge submitted exclusively by one party. Here, as in Schattilly, the jury charge (pertaining to the question of liability) was made up from defendant’s requests as preferred. The first 2 paragraphs of the quoted portion of such charge, together with occasional minor changes of phraseology, constitute the only exceptions. What we have quoted is “replete with error” (quotation from Schattilly, p 668 of report). It led the jury to…