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Grandstaff v. Hawks5/31/2000
l court did not clearly and definitively overrule State Farm's motion in limine to prevent Ms. Owens from testifying that an automobile like Mr. Forrest's passed her at a high rate of speed a short time before the collision. Thus, either State Farm or someone acting in State Farm's interest should have renewed the objection during Ms. Owens' testimony. No such motion was made, either by State Farms' lawyer or by Ms. Grandstaff's lawyer.
A party who invites or waives error, or who fails to take reasonable steps to cure an error, is not entitled to relief on appeal. See Tenn. R. App. P. 36(a), cmt. a. Failure to object evidence in a timely and specific fashion precludes taking issue on appeal with the admission of the evidence. See Ehrlich v. Weber, 114 Tenn. 711, 717-18, 88 S.W. 188, 189 (1905); Pyle v. Morrison, 716 S.W.2d 930, 936 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1986); Tenn. R. Evid. 103(a)(1). Accordingly, because State Farm did not renew its objection to Ms. Owens' testimony regarding Mr. Forrest passing her shortly before the accident, we decline to address whether this evidence was admissible.
II.
The Allocation of Fault
State Farm also insists that the trial court erred by instructing the jury to allocate the fault for the accident among Messrs. Hawks and Forrest and Ms. Grandstaff. Rather than defending the trial court's allocation-of-fault instructions, Ms. Grandstaff asserts that State Farm should not be permitted to use this error to obtain a new trial because State Farm did not object to the instructions and because State Farm was not prejudiced by the instructions. We have determined that State Farm may raise this issue because it challenged the instructions in a timely manner and that the manner in which the trial court instructed the jury to allocate fault for the collision was erroneous. However, we have also determined that the erroneous instructions do not warrant a new trial because, under the facts of this case, they, more likely than not, did not affect the jury's allocation of fault.
A.
Ms. Grandstaff argues that State Farm's objection to the trial court's instructions regarding the allocation of fault should meet the same fate as its objection to Ms. Owens' testimony. She asserts that State Farm should not be permitted to take issue with the instructions because it did not object to the instructions during the trial. State Farm has the better argument here, even though it neither objected to the instructions nor offered correct instructions at trial. It preserved its right to challenge the instructions on appeal by raising the issue in its motion for a new trial.
As we pointed out in the preceding section, parties who invite or waive errors at trial will not be entitled to invoke these errors to seek relief on appeal. See Tenn. R. App. P. 36(a) & cmt. a. The chief exception to this rule involves jury instructions. Trial courts have the duty to give accurate jury instructions. See Ladd v. Honda Motor Co., 939 S.W.2d 83, 93 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1996). Accordingly, Tenn. R. Civ. P. 51.02 provides that a party may seek a new trial because of an inaccurate instruction, even if it did not object to the instruction at trial. See Rule v. Empire Gas Corp., 563 S.W.2d 551, 553 (Tenn. 1978).
The issue State Farm seeks to raise on this appeal involves an error, as opposed to an omission, in the instructions. It argues that the trial court erroneously instructed the jury to include Ms. Grandstaff in its allocation of fault. While State Farm did not object to these instructions during the trial, it took issue with them in its motion for new trial. Accordingly, it has preserved this error as required by Tenn. R. Civ. P.
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