Answer:
Explanation:
An appellate court will reverse a lower court’s decision on the basis of the facts only
when the finding is clearly erroneous (that is, when it is contrary to the evidence
presented at trial) or when there is no evidence to support the finding. Appellate courts
normally defer to a trial court’s decision with regard to the facts of a case, however, for
several reasons. First, trial court judges and juries have the opportunity to observe
witnesses and tangible evidence first hand. The appellate court sees only a cold record of
the trial court proceedings and therefore cannot make the kind of judgments about the
credibility of witnesses and the persuasiveness of evidence that can be gleaned only from
firsthand experience. Second, as occurs when there is no jury and the case is heard by a
judge, trial judges routinely sit as fact finders. As a result, they develop a particular
expertise in determining what kind of evidence and testimony is reliable and what kind is not
