Opinion ID: 835035
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Error in Giving Uniform Jury Instruction

Text: We next consider defendant's argument that the trial court erred in giving the uniform jury instruction. As a threshold matter, plaintiff argues that the rules of appellate procedure preclude this court from reaching that argument. ORAP 9.20(2) defines the scope of this court's discretion to consider questions on review. It provides, in part, that unless the court otherwise limits the questions before it on review, the questions before the Supreme Court include all questions properly before the Court of Appeals that the petition or the response claims were erroneously decided by that court. Plaintiff petitioned for review in this court, and defendant submitted a response to the petition. In that response, defendant did not present the issue of the accuracy of the uniform jury instruction. Therefore, plaintiff contends, defendant abandoned the argument it now urges. Defendant acknowledges that it did not include a question about the adequacy of the uniform jury instruction in the eight supplemental questions that it listed in its response to plaintiff's petition for review. Nonetheless, defendant asserts, ORAP 9.20(2) recognizes additional authority for this court to consider other issues that were before the Court of Appeals. In this case, the question whether defendant took the necessary steps to place the accuracy of the uniform jury instruction properly before the Court of Appeals is a close one. Although the record plainly reveals that, at the trial court level, defendant objected and took proper exception to the uniform jury instruction, defendant's opening brief to the Court of Appeals did not raise the uniform jury instruction issue as a discrete claim. In that brief, defendant asserted as its sixteenth assignment of error: The trial court erred by instructing the jury solely on the Oregon statutory factors for assessing punitive damages without also providing defendant's proposed instructions on constitutional limits. In the preservation section of its opening brief, defendant noted that it had objected in the trial court to the uniform jury instruction and, in the argument section, defendant asserted that, as a result of omissions in that instruction, the court had given the jury a roadmap to error. Plaintiff understood defendant's sixteenth assignment of error to assert that the trial court had erred in failing to give defendant's proposed instructions 41 and 42. As to the giving of the uniform jury instruction, plaintiff, in his answering brief, argued that defendant ha[d] waived any challenge to this instruction. In a reply brief, defendant disputed that characterization and asserted that [t]he trial court also erred in giving instructions [on punitive damages] that were affirmatively misleading. In Dunlap v. Dickson, 307 Or. 175, 180 n. 4, 765 P.2d 203 (1988), this court indicated that it would exercise its discretion to reach an issue presented to the Court of Appeals (1) when there was a close connection between the issues, and (2) to avoid unnecessary technicality when we may do so and doing so resolves issues fairly raised below. [5] Those conditions also are present here and militate for review. Although defendant's statement of its sixteenth assignment of error did not present a clear objection to the trial court's giving of the uniform jury instruction, defendant's briefs did disclose its intent to assert that error. More importantly, both the court's failure to give defendant's proposed instruction and its giving of the uniform jury instruction raised precisely the same legal issue: whether the trial court correctly instructed the jury on the use of evidence of harm to nonparties. Having accepted review of the decision of the Court of Appeals and having decided that defendant's proffered instructions were incomplete and thereby inaccurate, we think it important also to decide the accuracy of the instructions that the jury did receive. Turning to the merits of defendant's argument, we observe that, when this case was tried, neither Campbell nor Williams II had been decided. We therefore understand the reason for the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the law regarding evidence of harm to nonparties. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that omission and the fact that the trial court did, in giving the uniform jury instruction, permit the jury to consider evidence of harm to nonparties in assessing punitive damages. In giving the uniform jury instruction, the court informed the jury: To recover punitive damages, [plaintiff] must show by clear and convincing evidence that defendant Philip Morris has shown a reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm and has acted with a conscious indifference to the health, safety, and welfare of others.      Punitive damages, if any, shall be determined and awarded based on the following: (1) The likelihood at the time that serious harm would arise from the defendant's misconduct; (2) The degree of the defendant's awareness of that likelihood[.] Plaintiff contends that the jury would have understood from that instruction the fine distinction that the law makes; namely, that evidence of harm to others may be used only in the assessment of reprehensibility and not to impose direct punishment for harm to nonparties. Plaintiff asserts that the other general instructions that the court gave focused the jury's attention on damage to the named plaintiff and prevented a misunderstanding of the punitive damages instruction that the court gave. We do not agree. The jury could have understood the uniform jury instruction to permit it to use evidence of harm to others in arriving at its punitive damages verdict and, without an explicit statement of the impermissible use of that evidence, such as that included in UCJI 75.02B (Nov 2009), the instruction was incomplete and unclear. The trial court erred in giving the uniform instruction.