Opinion ID: 1782956
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Substantial damages

Text: A sum, assessed by way of damages, which is worth having; opposed to nominal damages, which are assessed to satisfy a bare legal right. Wharton. Considerable in amount and intended as a real compensation for a real injury. Compensatory damages, by necessary implication, intends a reimbursement for loss suffered by reason of injury to person or property. Pullman Company v. Lutz, 154 Ala. 517, 45 So. 675, 14 L.R.A., N.S., 907. In the instant case, plaintiff, on proof of the negligence counts, was entitled to compensatory damages. Under the wanton count, plaintiff would be entitled to punitive damages. This court has said: Punitive damages, being apart from compensation, are not recoverable as a matter of right. Their imposition is discretionary with the jury. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co. v. Bizzell, 131 Ala. 429, 30 South. 777; 12 Am. & Eng. Ency. p. 51, and cases cited in notes to the text. And this discretion is not an unbridled or arbitrary one, but a legal, sound, and honest discretion; and, after instructing the jury in respect to the elements which must be found to exist to warrant the assessment of such damages, in submitting to the jury the question of imposing punitive damages, the court should always safeguard the submission with such instructions as that the jury will not be misguided, but will be held mindful, in fixing such damages, that they should act with due regard to the enormity or not of the wrong, and to the necessity of preventing similar wrongs, and that, if such damages are imposed, they should be in such an amount (much or little) as, under all the circumstances attending the commission of the wrong, the exigencies of the case, in the sound judgment and discretion of the jury, may demand, in no event to exceed the amount claimed in the complaint.    Coleman v. Pepper, 159 Ala. 310, 313, 314, 49 So. 310. In the instant case, the amount to be awarded for punitive damages, (much or little), was discretionary with the jury, under the applicable rule. For the court to say that the jury should give plaintiff substantial damages appears to us to invade the province of the jury. Plaintiff replies, and correctly so, that Charge 10, given for plaintiff, in Louisville & Nashville R. R. Company v. Lile, 154 Ala. 556, 45 So. 699, is substantially the same as plaintiff's given Charge 8 in the case at bar. In the Lile case, this court said: The criticism indulged against charge 9 is wholly inapplicable to it. Counsel must have had in mind written charge 10. But the criticism, if applied to the latter charge, can avail nothing. The most that can be said against it is that it is argumentative. The giving of it was not reversible error. Bray v. Ely, 105 Ala. 553, 17 South. 180; Karr v. State, 106 Ala. 1, 17 South. 328; Baldwin v. State, 111 Ala. 11, 20 South. 528. (154 Ala., at page 564, 45 So., at page 702.) We have not been able to ascertain what was the nature of the criticism directed against charge 10 in the Lile case. The cases cited by the court appear to state, as here pertinent, merely that, in our practice, the giving or refusal of argumentative instructions rests largely in the discretion of the trial court, which is not revisable on error. Bray v. Ely, supra. It does not appear that the objections in the Lile case are the same objections made in the instant case. We are of opinion that the defendant's fourth criticism of the instant Charge 8 is well taken and that, on another trial, the charge should not be given using the word, substantial, to describe damages. Plaintiff's Charge 5. If plaintiff's given Charge 5 be misleading, defendant could and should have requested explanatory charges. Whaley v. Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Co., 164 Ala. 216, 51 So. 419. This charge is the same as charge 1 which was given for the plaintiff and approved in Mobile Light & R. Co. v. Thomas, 16 Ala.App. 629, 80 So. 693.