Opinion ID: 197828
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Insufficiency of the Jury Verdict

Text: 25 The plaintiff's main contention on appeal is that the trial court erred by failing to grant her motion for a new trial following the second verdict, on the grounds that the damage award of $50,000 is insufficient. As noted above, it is comparatively more difficult to justify overturning a jury's verdict where the only evidence that something has gone awry is an allegedly insufficient damages award. Indeed, the jury is free to run the whole gamut of euphonious notes--to harmonize the verdict at the highest or lowest points for which there is a sound evidentiary predicate, or anywhere in between--so long as the end result does not violate the conscience of the court or strike such a dissonant chord that justice would be denied were the judgment permitted to stand. Milone, 847 F.2d at 37. At best, plaintiff's verdicts in personal injury cases are not models of mathematical exactitude. Thus, the fact that a particular award is a few dollars long or short would rarely (if ever) translate into a manifest miscarriage of justice. Id. at 41 n. 7. We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict, see Molloy v. Blanchard, 115 F.3d 86, 88 (1st Cir.1997), and will only overturn the jury's award and the trial judge's ensuing refusal to grant a new trial for abuse of discretion, see Correa, 69 F.3d at 1197. 26 The record demonstrates that most of the damages suffered by the plaintiff were intangible. An appellate court's normal disinclination to second-guess a jury's evaluation of the proper amount of damages is magnified where, as here, the damages entail a monetary valuation of intangible losses, and the trial judge, having seen and heard the witnesses at first hand, accepts the jury's appraisal. Id. Even accepting the plaintiff's complaints uncritically, which the jury was not required to do, her primary claims for damages are that (1) she suffers from pain; (2) the quality of her life has been reduced because of her pain and because of the measures she must take to avoid pain; and (3) her dignity, self-image, and sense of well-being have been adversely affected by the incident. 27 In addition to the intangible nature of the plaintiff's injuries, the evidence in this case permitted the jury to find that her injuries were not as severe as she claimed. The jury could also have found that most of the plaintiff's physical pain was caused not by the incident in question but by the plaintiff's failure to obey her doctor's orders not to move heavy objects, which orders were given in connection with her pre-existing back injury. The jury was free to disbelieve as much of the plaintiff's expert and lay testimony as it wished. In short, the plaintiff has provided no support for the proposition that the jury's $50,000 verdict was so far beyond the range of acceptable verdicts, based on the evidence presented at trial, that it constituted a manifest miscarriage of justice. The district court did not abuse its discretion by denying her motion for a new trial. 28