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Eagle-Picher Industries Inc. v. Balbos8/29/1990
s involving multiple litigants under Rule 2-512(h) and noted that once the court finds adverse interests " t is then totally within the court's discretion as to whether that interest justifies allowing the additional challenges." St. Luke, 74 Md. App. at 363, 537 A.2d 1196(citing Kloetzli, 65 Md. App. at 603, 501 A.2d 499). The decision to award additional challenges and the number of additional challenges to be awarded are totally within the discretion of the trial court. See Kloetzli, 65 Md. App. at 604, 501 A.2d 499; St. Luke, 74 Md. App. at 363-64, 537 A.2d 1196. If adversity or hostility is found, the trial court, in its discretion, may simply divide the strikes to which the party is entitled among the co-defendants allowing each to exercise its allotted strikes separately or the court may grant additional strikes to the party to be exercised separately by the individual co-defendants.
The only limit placed on the discretion of the trial judge is that the number of challenges to be exercised separately by an adverse co-defendant may not exceed the number available to a single party. In this case the number available to a single party was four. The function of the peremptory
strike privilege is to "eliminate extremes of partiality and to assure the parties that the case is decided solely on the basis of the evidence." Vaccaro v. Caple, 33 Md. App. 413, 416, 365 A.2d 47(1976). In St. Luke, 74 Md. App. at 364, 537 A.2d 1196, after the court determined that the trial judge erred by granting the plaintiff twice as many strikes as given to each co-defendant, the court next determined whether the deviation was so significant as to impair the peremptory privilege on behalf of the co-defendant. In the instant case the appellants / co-defendant's participation in only four strikes did not impair their peremptory privilege. The four strikes exercised equally by each co-defendant and the plaintiff ensured that "the full impact of the parties' participation in the selection of the jury" was not diluted and that neither the other co-defendant, nor the plaintiff "had more to say about who would . . . sit on the panel than" the appellant. King v. State Roads Comm'n, 284 Md. 368, 372, 396 A.2d 267(1979). In addition, the impartiality of the list of veniremen was safeguarded by the fact that any conflicting interests between the co-defendants were minimal while their overlapping interests were significant and the co-defendants together exercised eight strikes. We hold, therefore, that even if adversity or hostility had been found, the court acted properly in permitting each co-defendant to exercise four strikes separately.
16.
The trial court erred in ruling that plaintiffs could read certain deposition testimony of Dr. Daniel Braun and in ruling inadmissible other inconsistent deposition testimony of Dr. Braun offered by Eagle-Picher.
A. The 1985 Deposition
The trial court permitted counsel for appellees to read from Dr. Daniel Braun's 1985 deposition, at which Eagle-Picher was represented by counsel, taken in connection with a different case. At the time of the deposition, Dr. Braun had been president of the Industrial Health Foundation (IHF) since 1972. For many years, IHF has mailed to its member companies a digest containing, among
other things, abstracts of articles discussing asbestos. Appellees attempted to show throu
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