Opinion ID: 159750
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: jury instructions regarding punitive damages

Text: 48 Ingersoll-Rand contends the district court erroneously instructed the jury regarding the mental state necessary under New Mexico law to support an award of punitive damages. We consider jury instructions in their entirety, applying de novo review to determine whether the jury was misled on the applicable law. Medlock v. Ortho Biotech, Inc., 164 F.3d 545, 552 (10th Cir. 1999). Despite this standard of review, we do not require perfection, but we must be satisfied that, upon hearing the instructions, the jury understood the issues to be resolved and its duty to resolve them. Id. 49 The district court instructed the jury, pursuant to the New Mexico Uniform Jury Instructions, that it could award punitive damages if it found Ingersoll-Rand's conduct was malicious, willful, reckless, wanton or grossly negligent. Ingersoll-Rand argues the trial court erred in giving this instruction, contending the New Mexico Supreme Court eliminated gross negligence as a mental state sufficient to support the award of punitive damages in Paiz v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., 880 P.2d 300 (N.M. 1994). 7 The plaintiffs respond that Ingersoll-Rand misreads Paiz; while Paiz indeed held gross negligence to be an insufficient mental state, it did so because the jury instruction at issue in Paiz defined gross negligence as failure to exercise even slight care. Id. at 308. The Smiths assert the district court complied with Paiz, not by eliminating gross negligence from the jury instructions, but by defining it as an act or omission done with conscious indifference to harmful consequences. 8 50 Our reading of Paiz comports with that of the plaintiffs. The jury instruction at issue in Paiz troubled the court because it permitted a jury to award punitive damages on a showing of gross negligence, which was defined as failure to exercise even slight care. Id. The New Mexico Supreme Court reasoned that punitive damages are intended to punish and deter prohibited conduct, and thus should only be assessed where the conduct at issue displays a conscious or deliberate disregard of a potential harm. Id. The defendant must act knowingly, displaying an evil motive or culpable mental state. Id. The Paiz court set the mental state necessary to support punitive damages at reckless disregard, which, under its definition, occurs, when the defendant knows of potential harm to the interests of the plaintiff but nonetheless 'utterly fails to exercise care' to avoid the harm. Id. (citations omitted). 51 The crux of the Paiz decision, thus, is the degree of mental culpability required to award punitive damages; the legal catch-phrase attached to that mental state is secondary, if not wholly arbitrary. As the Paiz court noted, the phrase gross negligence is so nebulous as to have no generally accepted meaning. Id. at 309 (quoting W. Page Keeton, et. al, Prosser & Keeton on the Law of Torts 34, at 212 (5th ed. 1984)). In this case, the district court defined the phrase gross negligence as an act or omission done with conscious indifference to harmful consequences. (emphasis added). In so doing, the district court aligned the definition of gross negligence with the mental state required in Paiz. To hold the district court improperly instructed the jury would be to elevate form over meaning, and violate our edict that no particular form of words is essential if the instruction as a whole conveys the correct statement of the applicable law. Webb v. ABF Freight System, Inc., 155 F.3d 1230, 1248 (10th Cir. 1998) (internal quotation omitted). Here, we are satisfied the instructions as a whole convey a correct statement of the law of the State of New Mexico and can discern no abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court.