Opinion ID: 2209181
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Instructions on pain and suffering.

Text: Appellant requested the following instruction and several others of similar import and refusal to give them is assigned as error: You are instructed that if you find for the Plaintiff in this action, you should not award any damages for any pain or mental suffering sustained by the decedent unless you find as a fact that the decedent actually suffered conscious pain or suffering by reason of her personal injuries. It is true that there can be no recovery for pain and suffering while an injured person is unconscious and damages are only allowable for such time as the injured person is conscious. Stone v. Sinclair Refining Co., 229 Mich. 103, 200 N.W. 948; Vanderlippe v. Midwest Studios, 137 Neb. 289, 289 N.W. 341; Lewis v. Read, 80 N.J.Super. 148, 193 A.2d 255; 25 C.J.S. Damages § 62; 22 Am.Jur.2d, Damages, § 246. When an injured person is killed instantly, Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Capital Trust Co., 242 U.S. 144, 37 S.Ct. 41, 61 L.Ed. 208, or dies without regaining consciousness, New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad Company v. Harris, 247 U.S. 367, 38 S.Ct. 535, 62 L.Ed. 1167, Canales v. Bank of California, Tex.Civ.App., 316 S.W.2d 314, Carr v. Arthur D. Little, Inc., 348 Mass. 469, 204 N.E.2d 466, damages cannot be awarded for pain and suffering. The court instructed generally that damages should be fair and only in such amount as will fairly compensate for injuries sustained and in no event should result from prejudice, passion, speculation or conjecture. He also instructed In determining the amount of    damages, you may consider the    mental and physical pain as the Plaintiff has experienced. Appellant excepted to the latter instruction because the court did not point out that such mental and physical pain must be a conscious pain. The trial court viewed his instructions as ample and determined that the jury had not been misled when this matter was again urged upon application for a new trial. It would have been proper for the trial court in express words to have stated to the jury that damages could only be awarded for conscious pain since such is a correct statement of the law. However, we believe when he instructed that damages may only be awarded for pain experienced, the jury was in effect told and it could only have understood this to mean conscious pain for if one is unconscious, he does not experience pain. To experience something is to meet with, feel, suffer, (or) undergo it. Webster's Third New International Dictionary. In Renaldi v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company, 2 Cir., 230 F.2d 841, 59 A.L.R.2d 1371, an injured person lived 3½ days after the accident and was conscious a substantial portion of that time; the court in instructing on damages did not qualify pain and suffering by the word conscious. The court disposed of the alleged error in instructions by saying We think, however, that the charge of the trial judge was phrased in terms connoting experiental reality, and that the jury hearing it would consider only that pain actually experienced by the deceased. We reach the same conclusion in this case.