 evidence is in for, and what you can use it for.... A defense has the right to introduce evidence of possible other reasons why something happens in which the attempt is to hold them responsible. This is not evidence, in any way, to suggest that Mrs. Ratner suffered all of these side effects. These are all the potential side effects that you can get from these kind of drugs, so it is not evidence that she did suffer them. It's merely for the purpose of showing a possibility, which is going to be your function to make the determination, not any books or anything. Okay?
This was improper. In arriving at our conclusion, we do not address the troublesome issues of whether PDR evidence is the kind of "list register, periodical or... compilation" described in Evid.R. 63(30) or whether it is a proper subject for judicial notice under Evid.R. 9. Even assuming that there is no hearsay bar against the use of such evidence and that it can be admitted through an abbreviated judicial notice procedure, without an expert opinion, it should not have been admitted here. The existence of the cornucopia of possible side effects listed in the PDR did not have a tendency to prove any material fact in this case. There was no suggestion in this record that plaintiff suffered any of the side effects listed in the PDR or that the accident was in any way attributable to such side effects. Indeed, if the jury had returned a verdict which, in some way, reflected its belief that plaintiff's side effects caused this accident, *206 we would be compelled to set the verdict aside as sheer speculation. Moreover, the trial judge's so-called "limiting instruction" served no purpose. If, as he said, the reading from the PDR was not to suggest that plaintiff suffered from side effects which may have caused the accident, it had no meaning at all and should have been excluded.
Here, we cannot say that plaintiff was not prejudiced by the laundry list of possible side effects defendants' counsel read to the jury, not a single one of which was related even obliquely to her own physical reaction. The statistical occurrence of a side effect is simply not probative of how a medication actually affects a particular patient. As such, the reading from the PDR was harmful error requiring reversal. This is not to suggest that a PDR entry would never be admissible. The question of its admissibility in a particular case is fact sensitive. Thus, for example, in a duty to warn case, where the fact in issue is whether a particular side effect is commonly known to attend the administration of a particular drug, a PDR entry might well be relevant and admissible. Feldman v. Lederle Laboratories, 97 N.J. 429, 436, 479 A.2d 374 (1984). We hold only that here it should have been excluded.
On a separate note, prior to trial the trial judge ruled on an in limine motion filed by defendants with respect to a report of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration of consumer complaints regarding sudden self-acceleration by vehicles like plaintiff's 1980 Buick Regal. That ruling was premature. It should not have been made in the abstract but only in the context of the facts elicited at trial. Bellardini v. Krikorian, 222 N.J. Super. 457, 537 A.2d 700 (App.Div. 1988). If, as the case unfolded, notice became an issue, for example, the trial judge would be faced with entirely different considerations than if the complaints were offered to show a defect per se. Thus, on the retrial, the question of the admissibility of the *207 report should be decided at the point at which the evidence is offered, after an Evid.R. 8 hearing out of the jury's presence.
Reversed and remanded.
NOTES
[1] Plaintiff's husband, Lester A. Ratner, sued per quod.
[2] Plaintiff provided Enz' expert report to defendants in answer to interrogatories propounded in conformity with R. 4:10-2(d)(1), thus rendering the report a "binding discovery admission" within the meaning of Skibinski v. Smith, 206 N.J. Super. 349, 354, 502 A.2d 1154 (App.Div. 1985).
Document Info
Citation Numbers： 241 N.J. Super. 197, 574 A.2d 541
Judges： Judges Pressler, Long and Landau
Filed Date： 5/16/1990
Precedential Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 9/18/2017It’s not a bad purchase, but perhaps unnecessary. I’m still using a DSLR that Nikon released in 2008. They don’t stop working or go obsolete once Nikon pulls them from the website. There are no firmware upgrades (generally, always exceptions of course). Hopefully the two additional lenses are an improvement over what you have. 

Generally, lenses are the better investment. Image quality is more a factor of the lens than the camera (low light performance, AF speed, etc not withstanding). Jumping from crop sensor to full frame is always a noticeable improvement. Or if your current camera is missing features that are holding you back, then by all means. But upgrading just to have something less old wouldn’t be my choice.a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday May 20th, 2007
Having struggled through the blizzard and arrived at the station only to discover that the train to Boston had been delayed by snow, three Unitarian Universalist ministers retired to the bar to wait. They waited for an hour, and still no train; then two hours; until finally, after nearly three hours had passed, one of the ministers looked up from her drink and noticed, not only had the train arrived, but it was already pulling out of the station! Grabbing up the suitcases, the three ministers dashed for the platform. One was just able to leap aboard; then the train picked up speed, and the other two were left behind.…
A porter had witnessed this entire episode, and as the two remaining ministers passed him on their way back to the bar, he called out to them “tough break, missing your train like that.”
“Oh, we’ll be all right,” the oldest and the wisest of the ministers responded. “It’s young Jensen there I’m worried about. He was here to see us off!”
OK, I admit it. Maybe this story didn’t happen exactly the way I just told it. But there’s still more truth to it than you might expect. There’s something about the nature of Unitarian Universalists — and of Unitarian Universalist ministers in particular — that makes us loathe to miss the train, or the boat, or what have you, even when we have no particularly compelling reason from moving on from where we are. It’s the flip-side of our reputation as a questioning faith — a religious of progress and growth. We also tend to be a trendy faith, restless in our search for the avant garde, a faith of perpetual motion.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century, there was a brief affirmation, written by the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, which was very popular within our movement, and which sums up much of this questing spirit. It affirmed “The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the Leadership of Jesus, Salvation by Character, and the Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward forever.” Today the gendered language makes this statement sound archaic and vaguely inappropriate to our more “progressive” ears, but the sentiment it expresses still remains strong. We are one people, accountable to the same ultimate reality, inspired by the great religious teachers of the past, yet at the end of the day personally responsible for our own ethical choices in the quest for spiritual transcendence and its related free and responsible search for truth and meaning…and the journey itself is endless: “onward and upward forever.” We see ourselves as a Religion of Progress, where the process is more important than the product. And this is why the habit of running for the train takes over, even when we’d come along simply to say “farewell.”
The concept of a religious quest or journey is one that appears in most of the world’s great religions. But this notion that life is in some way a “perpetual pilgrimage” is really quite unique. And from time to time one also hears murmuring that, while the trip is fine, it might also me nice to “arrive” every once in awhile — to have a place where we can rest and hang our hats, a place to call our “home.” I see evidence of this spirit everywhere — from the widespread use of common symbols, such as this flaming chalice, in our worship, to the emphasis on “mission” and “covenant” and the periodic efforts to rework our “Principles and Purposes” statement, which seems to renew itself every few years. Some of this, I suspect, is simply a response to Unitarian Universalism’s recent growth and revitalization — the search for something new to replace the sense of homogeneity that had resulted from that old, implicit Unitarian creed of “The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston.” But it is also, I think, a realization that the statement “Unitarian Universalists are people who believe that beliefs must change as circumstances change” makes us sound a little wishy-washy: as though belief itself counts for little, and change is what we truly worship.
There are several related questions at issue here, and I want to take just a moment to unravel them a little, so that we can look at them together in a