After her son was murdered during an apparent robbery in the parking lot of the Venetian Hills apartment complex in Atlanta, Carrie Raines brought this wrongful death action against John Maughan, the owner of the complex, alleging that Maughan breached a duty to keep the premises safe.1 The case was tried by a Fulton County jury, which returned a verdict for Maughan, and Raines now appeals. Raines contends that the trial court erred when it failed to excuse a prospective juror for cause, refused to admit certain evidence, charged the jury to apportion any damages under OCGA § 51-12-33, and refused to give two instructions that Raines requested. We see no reversible error and affirm. 1. We first consider the claim that the trial court should have excused a prospective juror for cause. The prospective juror in question, a nephrologist, was asked in voir dire about his views on tort reform, and he responded that he thought negligence should be proven clearly and damages in negligence cases ought to be capped. But when he was asked whether he would follow the instructions of the court, even to the extent that they might differ from his own view of how negligence cases should be tried, the nephrologist said that he “absolutely” would do so. Raines later moved the court to excuse the nephrologist for cause, arguing that the nephrologist could not be believed when he said that he would follow the instructions of the court. The nephrologist was not worthy of belief, Raines said, because he failed to disclose on his written juror questionnaire that he was a physician and failed to raise his hand in response to a preliminary question about tort reform that Raines put to the whole panel. The trial court refused to excuse the nephrologist for cause, and Raines eventually used a peremptory strike to excuse him.
Whether to excuse a prospective juror for cause is committed to the sound discretion of the trial court, Pinckney v. State , 285 Ga. 458, 460 3 678 SE2d 480 2009, and we see no abuse of that discretion here. In the first place, no written juror questionnaire appears in the record, so we do not know whether the nephrologist failed to disclose his profession on the questionnaire, but the record does show that he identified himself as a physician when the whole panel was asked in preliminary questioning whether any physicians were among the prospective jurors. And about the contention that the nephrologist was not forthcoming during the preliminary questioning about his views on tort reform, we note that Raines asked the panel first whether any prospective juror “believes there is something wrong with our civil justice system that needs to be fixed through tort reform,” and then, before all of the prospective jurors responded, asked a different question, whether any prospective juror “doesn’t believe we need reform.” We cannot say that the failure of the nephrologist to volunteer at that point that he had a view on tort reform is any more suggestive of dishonesty than confusion in response to these contradictory questions. In any event, we have said before that “a trial judge is uniquely positioned to evaluate whether a prospective juror can render an impartial verdict, considering that the trial judge, unlike appellate judges, can observe a prospective juror in person and take account of his demeanor and countenance, not just the words that he speaks.” Harrison v. State , 309 Ga. App. 454, 454 1 711 SE2d 35 2011. We have no reason in this case to question the determination of the trial judge that the nephrologist was credible when he promised to follow the instructions of the court, and the claim that the trial court abused its discretion when it failed to excuse him for cause is without merit.
