Opinion ID: 1964897
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The defendants' view of the evidence.

Text: The defendants next contend that even if the plaintiffs are permitted to rise above their own evidence, the record will not support a jury finding of proximate cause. They argue, essentially, that the requisite proof of causation could not have been provided by the plaintiffs' expert witnesses, because these witnesses did not believe that any of the plaintiffs suffered from somatoform disorder. If the plaintiffs' experts discerned no psychogenic injury, then, according to the defendants, these experts could not have testified that the defendants inflicted that kind of an injury on the somatization plaintiffs. The defendants essentially view the case as comparable to a hypothetical one in which an expert for the plaintiff claimed that the defendant's negligence caused the plaintiff to suffer a heart attack, but in which the jury found that the plaintiff's heart was healthy but that the plaintiff had sustained a broken leg. According to the defendants, the somatization plaintiffs' claimed injuries are so unlike the psychogenic disorder found by the jury that the testimony of the plaintiffs' experts regarding causation is just as beside the point here as it would be in the hypothetical situation that we have postulated. The defendants also assert that a finding of causation cannot be predicated on the testimony of the expert witnesses for the defense because, according to the defendants, these experts rejected the existence of any link between the somatization plaintiffs' disorder and the conditions at the Waterside Mall. The defendants conclude that because neither the experts for the plaintiffs nor the experts for the defendants provided evidence establishing proximate cause, the trial judge did not err in granting JNOV. Although there is a certain appealing symmetry in the defendants' position, we do not believe that their argument can carry the day. In our judgment, the defendants take an unduly cramped view of the expert testimony, and they fail to rebut reasonable inferences that a fair-minded juror could legitimately draw from the sequence of events reflected in this record.