Opinion ID: 2038
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ambiguous Jury Instructions and Verdict Form.

Text: The plaintiffs argue that the district court erred by using a verdict form that failed to separate Heidi's damages from Kent's damages, and that as a result, they were prejudiced and are entitled to a new trial on damages. We agree. The denial of a motion for a new trial is reviewed for an abuse of discretion, Moore ex rel. Estate of Grady v. Tuelja, 546 F.3d 423, 427 (7th Cir.2008), and we will not set aside a verdict unless a party suffered prejudice from the assigned error, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 61. In their complaint, the plaintiffs asserted separate causes of action. Heidi's claims were for negligence, wilful and wanton misconduct, and battery, while Kent's only claim was for loss of society. The district court grouped the negligence and loss of society claims for purposes of the jury instructions and the verdict form. With respect to the negligence claim, the district court instructed the jury as follows: On the negligence count, you must fix the amount of money which will reasonably and fairly compensate them for any of the following elements of damages proved by the evidence to have resulted from the negligence of the defendant, taking into consideration the nature, extent and duration of the injury.  The reasonable expense of necessary medical care, treatment, and services received and the present cash value of the reasonable expenses of medical care, treatment and services reasonably certain to be received in the future;  The loss of a normal life experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future;  The pain and suffering experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future;  The emotional distress experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future;  The value of salaries and benefits lost;  The loss of society and companionship experienced by Kent Happel and the loss of society and companionship that is reasonably certain to be deprived of [sic] in the future;  The value of the loss of services of his wife experienced by Kent Happel. Whether any of these elements of damages has been proved by the evidence is for you to determine. . . . If you find that both Plaintiffs are entitled to recover, you will assess the damages of each separately and return a verdict in separate amount for each. The plaintiffs proposed a verdict form that separated the jury's damage awards as to Heidi and Kent and provided spaces for further itemization of the damages. Rejecting that proposed verdict form, the court used a form that contained only one line for damages: We, the jury, find for the plaintiffs, Heidi Happel and Kent Happel, on the count of negligence and fix their compensatory damages at $______. In determining whether the verdict form is confusing, we must consider it in light of the instructions given, see United States v. Hines, 728 F.2d 421, 427 (10th Cir.1984), and we construe jury instructions in their entirety and not in artificial isolation, United States v. Westmoreland, 122 F.3d 431, 434 (7th Cir.1997), reviewing whether the jury was misled in any way and whether it had understanding of the issues and its duty to determine those issues, Tikalsky v. City of Chicago, 687 F.2d 175, 181 (7th Cir.1982) (citation omitted). Considered together, the jury instructions and the verdict form were ambiguous. The district court's instructions to the jury improperly subsumed Kent's loss of society claim within Heidi's negligence claim and did not clearly explain to the jury that the plaintiffs had individually asserted unique claims. Although the loss of society instructions specifically referred to Kent, they were at the end of a general negligence instruction which never explained which damages were unique to Heidi's claim. Even if this ambiguity could have been clarified by the court's instruction that the jury return separate verdicts for each plaintiff, it conflicted with the verdict form's single line for a total damage amount. The verdict form gives us no insight as to how the jury allocated the damages among Heidi's and Kent's claims. And contrary to Walmart's assertions that the Happels' marital status makes a division of damages unnecessary for purposes of distributing the jury award, Illinois courts have rejected the argument that settlement amounts should be combined for the purposes of set-off simply because the plaintiffs are a family unit. See, e.g., Johnson v. Belleville Radiologists, Ltd., 221 Ill.App.3d 100, 163 Ill.Dec. 596, 581 N.E.2d 750, 757 (1991) (in case where a husband and wife sued hospital and doctors for medical malpractice and settled with two defendants before trial, trial court properly refused to set off total settlement against nonsettling defendants' judgment because Illinois has not adopted a bright-line rule requiring total set-off when plaintiffs are family unit). Therefore, we conclude that any finding by the jury in which both Heidi and Kent were entitled to damages could be challenged because the jury instructions and verdict form were ambiguous. As a result, it is impossible to determine the proper set-off allocation. And it was error to give the instruction and utilize the verdict form. Next, we turn to whether the plaintiffs suffered prejudice from the combined award. Before trial, both Kent and Heidi settled with Heidi's primary care physician for $75,000 each, and the district court set off the total of their settlements, $150,000, from the jury's damage award of $465,400. But the set-off amount assumes that the jury awarded more than $75,000 to both Kent and Heidi. If, for instance, the jury believed that Kent was only entitled to $5,000 in damages and allocated the remaining $460,400 to Heidi, then Kent's and Heidi's set-off amounts would have been $5,000 and $75,000 respectively. That would result in a total set-off of $80,000, which is $70,000 less than the amount the district court had calculated. In other words, if either Kent's or Heidi's portion of the damage award is less than $75,000, then the appropriate set-off would be less than the $150,000 set by the district court. And the Happels would have been left with more of the award to take home. Clearly, the Happels were prejudiced by the use of a verdict form that may have resulted in a lower damage award. [8] Finally, we reject Walmart's argument that the Happels did not appeal the set-off order and cannot use their challenge to the verdict form to do so. We do not believe the Happels' reference to the set-off in identifying the prejudice of an ambiguous verdict can be construed as a challenge to the set-off order. If the jury's allocation of damages on remand does warrant a recalculation of the set-off amount, the district court has broad discretion to vacate its previous order. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b).