Opinion ID: 2433995
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Hope Wiggins

Text: The appellants correctly point out that Melinda's employment record was hardly such as to support a finding that she would have made a financial contribution to Hope sufficient to support the award of $325,000. As the appellants say, the award must have been based primarily on Hope's loss of parental guidance from the mother who died so shortly after Hope's birth. As the appellees correctly point out, the evidence of Melinda's experience with her other child during its eighteen-month battle with congenital brain tumors displayed her capacity for love and parental care adequately. It is, of course, difficult to place a value on an individual parent's prospective contribution to raising a child who has suffered substantial health problems related to her premature birth. In our view, the jury is in a far better position than we to do so. The only basis for the appellants' allegation that the award was the result of the jury's passion and prejudice is that they were aware of the insurance. As noted early in this opinion, that awareness was unavoidable. Given the evidence of the mothering capacity of Melinda Wiggins and the task she would have faced with Hope, we are not in a position to say the size of the award shows that the knowledge that insurance companies were involved caused passion and prejudice in the jurors. Nor can we say that the love, care, and guidance of a mother during what would have been her normal lifetime is necessarily worth less than $325,000. The appellants have asked that we compare jury awards in other cases, such as: Bridges v. Stephens, 238 Ark. 801, 384 S.W.2d 490 (1964), and Carr v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 384 F.Supp. 821 (W.D.Ark.1974), in which the awards were much smaller. In Clark County Lumber Company v. Collins, 249 Ark. 465, 459 S.W.2d 800 (1970), we said: Every case involving the issue of an excessive verdict must be examined on its own facts; and before this court can constitutionally reduce a verdict we must give the evidence in favor of the verdict its highest probative force and then determine whether there is any substantial evidence to sustain the verdict. Breitenberg v. Parker, 237 Ark. 261, 372 S.W.2d 828 [(1963)]. . . . . . This court is considerably limited in determining whether a jury award is excessive. A jury and the trial court have an advantage over us in seeing and hearing the witnesses as they testify and their testimony is weighed. We are unable to rely on awards made in other cases in determining whether an award of damages in a given case is excessive because a comparison of awards made in other cases is a most unsatisfactory method of determining a proper award in a particular case, not only because the degree of injury is rarely the same, but also because the dollar no longer has its prior value. [249 Ark. at 476, 477, 459 S.W.2d at 805.]