Only evidence is allowed into the jury room during deliberations. Thus, the trial court should not permit formula charts, which can be used in oral argument but not admitted into evidence, to be taken into the jury room. To suggest to a jury a sum per unit of pain is not inconsistent with analogous arguments. If a party could show a jury had arrived at a sum for pain and suffering by placing a value on a unit of pain, we would not grant a new trial. The concept of totality pronounced by the majority opinion has no counterpart in the world of human affairs.
Society recognizes 'the day' as a basic unit of humanity.
We rise in the morning and go to bed at night, and our institutions function accordingly. Pain is lived by the hour and the day and is ticked off by the same clock that sends one to work in the morning and home at night. Although the jurors will eat their daily meals and live their daily lives, they must now think of pain and suffering as a lifetime lump. Such a coerced concept will have no more meaning than lifetime rent, lifetime shoes, or lifetime meals. This court's logic would now force jurors to value steak by the herd, cars by the fleet, and pain by the life.