In a case stemming from an improper jury instruction, a lower court’s decision to grant a new trial has been reversed by the Pennsylvania Superior Court, after the intermediate appellate body found that the judge had not only sought to reinstate an invalid verdict, but also granted the new trial based on an issue the plaintiff failed to raise in her post-trial motion.
In its precedential April 4 decision in Shook v. Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group, a three-judge panel remanded the slip-and-fall suit back to the Chester County trial court. Although the panel agreed with the trial court’s assessment that it had initially improperly instructed the jury that it could not return a zero damages verdict, the court ultimately found that the lower court’s decision to grant a new trial was erroneous.
