Opinion ID: 2087924
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Remittitur

Text: As related at the beginning, the jury awarded Mrs. Lawson $2,750,000 in damages and her husband $200,000 for loss of consortium. The trial court granted GWU's motion for a new trial unless the Lawsons accepted a remittitur reducing the awards to $1 million and $35,000 respectively. The court concluded that the damage awards were beyond all reason, that any awards to Mrs. Lawson beyond $1 million would shock the court's conscience, and that $35,000 was the outer limit the court could sustain for loss of consortium on the record of this case. In reaching these conclusions, the court summarized the evidence and explained its reasoning as follows: Ms. Lawson went to see defendant Dr. Olding ... with a small but very aggressive growth by the nail of her right ring finger. While the nature of the growth was not entirely clear all medical experts agreed that the tissue had to be removed. Dr. Olding, with plaintiffs' consent, chose to remove the tissue by amputating the distal phalanx portion of Ms. Lawson's right ring finger. The jury heard testimony from which it could and did conclude that surgery less invasive than amputation should have sufficed to remove the growth although the less invasive surgery would also have left Ms. Lawson's ring finger with a less than normal appearance. The aftermath of the amputation also created tendon problems in Ms. Lawson's two adjoining fingers which subsequent surgery has been unable to resolve, leaving Ms. Lawson with limited use and flexibility of three of her fingers. As to damages, plaintiff incurred medical expenses of approximately $11,000 and put on expert witnesses who testified that this 34 year old woman would never be able to do any work of any kind thus losing $486,000 of income over the course of her otherwise expected working life; would need extensive psychotherapy to help alleviate her emotional turmoil, anxiety, and sense of loss at a cost of $60,562; and would be unable to be of any real help in doing household chores, a loss calculated at $196,356 for help around the house  a total of $753,918 in special damages. As indicated earlier, the jury returned a general verdict. While defendants put on no damage witnesses of their own they did cross-examine plaintiff's witnesses. For example, Ms. Lawson asked the jury to award close to $200,000 in damages to compensate for the loss of her household services but presented no evidence that anything had been spent for that purpose in the two and one-half years since her surgery. Similarly, while the damage done to the mobility of Ms. Lawson's three fingers may well have made it difficult or impossible to do her usual work at a computer keyboard, it is difficult to credit that Ms. Lawson's response to the surgery left her so incapacitated as to be unable to perform any gainful work or household chores for the next quarter century of her life. Even if all of the claimed special damages are unblinkingly accepted as within the generously expansive province of a munificent jury  and this the court cannot do 1 the jury still awarded close to $2 million in pain and suffering to a highly anxious woman who had some past physical pain, but currently is in no significant physical pain and is afflicted with feelings of emptiness and loss that has led her to shy away from intimacy. A court does not lightly upset a jury's verdict. In determining whether a verdict is excessive, the trial court must consider whether the verdict is beyond all reason or is so great as to shock the conscience. In this instance, the court concludes that the jury has exceeded the outer bounds of reasonableness both in awarding $2,750,000 to Ms. Lawson and in awarding $200,000 to her husband for loss of consortium. Any award beyond a total of $1 million for Ms. Lawson would shock the court's conscience. As to the award for loss of consortium, $35,000 is the outer limit this court can accept especially considering there was no testimony from Mr. Lawson as to the impact his wife's injury had on their relationship. 1. A reduction to no more than $650,000 is plainly warranted.
The trial court may grant a new trial subject to a remittitur if the verdict is so large that `it is beyond all reason or is so great as to shock the conscience.' Sigal Construction Corp. v. Stanbury, 586 A.2d 1204, 1220 (D.C.1991). As this standard implies, [o]ur own decisions, and hence the conduct of judges in the Superior Court, reflect[ ] a[n] ... unwillingness to interfere with the jury's calculation of damages unless there is firm support in the record for such action. Finkelstein v. District of Columbia, 593 A.2d 591, 595, 596 (D.C.1991) (en banc) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Once the trial court has set a damage award aside and stated its reasons, however, this court will accord great deference to that decision. Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). [G]iven both the traditional self-restraint exercised by trial courts in this area and the trial judge's unique opportunity to consider the evidence in the living courtroom context, we have followed the rule  and we do so today  that we will reverse the grant of a new trial for excessive verdict only where the quantum of damages found by the jury was clearly within the maximum limit of a reasonable range. Every doubt on that score will be resolved in the trial court's favor. Id. (emphasis in original; citations, quotation marks, and footnotes omitted). See also Louison v. Crockett, 546 A.2d 400, 403 (D.C.1988); Lacy v. District of Columbia, 408 A.2d 985, 988-89 (D.C.1979). As the trial court's analysis reveals, it found the size of the damage award to Mrs. Lawson unjustified in two primary respects: first, insofar as it appeared to rest on Mrs. Lawson's assertion that her response to the surgery left her so incapacitated as to be unable to perform any gainful work or household chores for the next quarter century of her life; and second, in that it awarded her pain and suffering  close to $2 million worth  well out of proportion to the permanent physical and emotional injuries she suffered from the amputation. Admittedly an amputation of any kind is a severe injury, but, as the trial court pointed out, the evidence was that even less invasive surgery would have left Mrs. Lawson's ring finger with an abnormal appearance. Admittedly also, Mrs. Lawson claimed that now, two and a half years after the surgery, she was still so debilitated and depressed by the experience that she essentially could not function, but the trial court was not barred from asking whether the jury could reasonably credit that assertion or, rather, in doing so was swayed by passion or other impermissible factors. See, e.g., Louison, 546 A.2d at 403 (in considering motion to strike verdict as excessive, trial court must consider whether verdict resulted from passion, prejudice, mistake, or other improper elements). The trial court found the evidence of lasting injuries insufficient to justify a verdict more than four times the size of the special damages Ms. Lawson had reasonably incurred. Resolving in favor of that judgment any doubt we might have on whether the quantum of damages was clearly within the maximum limit of reasonableness, Finkelstein, supra, we have no basis on which to set aside the trial court's decision. [5] Accordingly, the judgment of the Superior Court is affirmed in all respects. So ordered.