Garrigan v. LaSalle Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

The opinion Mr. Justice Souris has proposed for this case is a step in the right direction, and I have signed it. More needs be said, however. That opinion, assuming it receives majority support, decides only that the judge-weighed testimony in this jury-tried case of Garrigan, unlike the judge-weighed testimony in the jury-tried case of Linabery v. LaVasseur, 359 Mich 122, did not—as a matter of law—destroy the statutory “presumption” of negligence. Which is to say that the trial lawyers and trial judges of Michigan are obliged to guess anon whether the rule of automatic disappearance, late…