Opinion ID: 1583279
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Waiver of Objections to Instruction 17 and the Jury Verdict Form.

Text: We begin with Sumpter's contention that Olson did not preserve error on her claims for the district court's posttrial consideration. Generally, under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.924, error in jury instructions is waived if not raised before closing arguments are made to the jury. See Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.924 (stating that objections to jury instructions must be made and ruled on before arguments to the jury and that [n]o other . . . objections shall be asserted thereafter, or considered on appeal); Julian v. City of Cedar Rapids, 271 N.W.2d 707, 708-09 (Iowa 1978) (reversing the district court's grant of a new trial on grounds not raised before submission of instructions to the jury); Peterson v. First Nat'l Bank of Iowa, 392 N.W.2d 158, 161 (Iowa Ct.App.1986) (same). Olson failed to expressly object to Instruction 17 or the jury verdict form before closing arguments. Although her counsel did make a timely objection to Instructions 14, 15, and 16, noting that he did not think there is sufficient evidence to go to the jury on the fault of the plaintiff, we conclude that objection did not suffice to avoid waiver of Olson's posttrial challenge to Instruction 17 and the verdict form. Even a timely objection to jury instructions will not avoid waiver of error if the objection is not sufficiently specific. The objecting party must specify[ ] the matter objected to and on what grounds. Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.924. The objection must be `sufficiently specific to alert the trial court to the basis of the complaint so that if error does exist the court may correct it before placing the case in the hands of the jury.' Boham v. City of Sioux City, 567 N.W.2d 431, 438 (Iowa 1997) (quoting Moser v. Stallings, 387 N.W.2d 599, 604 (Iowa 1986)). And if the objection assails the sufficiency of the evidence supporting an instruction, it must specify that portion of the instruction lacking evidentiary support and the particular factual deficiency. Id. (holding that a general objection that the evidence was insufficient to submit various instructions to the jury was not adequate to alert the district court to the contention on appeal that the evidence was insufficient to submit pre-death damages to the jury). When measured against these well-established principles, Olson's objection to Instructions 14, 15, and 16 was clearly inadequate to alert the district court to the substance of her alternative posttrial claims that (1) the mitigation defense should not have been submitted to the jury as a component of comparative fault, and (2) the district court erred in failing to employ separate jury verdict forms as suggested by our decision in Greenwood v. Mitchell, 621 N.W.2d 200, 208 (Iowa 2001). Olson contends her failure to make a specific objection to Instruction 17 and the jury verdict form before closing arguments is excused by Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 1.924. That rule allows a party to first raise in a motion for new trial an objection to a revised or added jury instruction given by the district court after closing arguments. As we have already noted, Olson's motion for new trial asserted that the district court's response to the jury's question was erroneous because it failed to inform the jury that a percentage of fault for failure to mitigate damages could be assigned to Olson only for the time period after any failure to mitigate commenced. We assume without deciding that the court's answer to the jury's question was an added instruction and that Olson could raise a timely objection to it in her motion for new trial under rule 1.924. But under the circumstances presented in this case, Olson's timely posttrial objection to the court's added instruction was without merit. The added instruction was completely consistent with the instructions given by the court to the jury without objection before the jury began its deliberations. Instruction 17 informed the jury that fault would include any failure by Olson to mitigate her damages. The court's added instruction merely reconfirmed this for the jury. Instruction 17 had also already informed the jury that a percentage of fault could be allocated to Olson for any failure to mitigate damages during the time period after the failure to mitigate. It was therefore unnecessary to restate that temporal limitation in the additional instruction that was given in response to the jury's question. We find no error in the additional instruction and must reject Olson's effort to utilize a posttrial motion to resurrect error that was waived by her failure to object before closing arguments to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the mitigation instruction and the adequacy of the jury verdict form. Olson also contends on appeal that her failure to object before closing arguments to Instruction 17 and the verdict form did not waive error because the comparative fault defense was asserted by Sumpter. Olson cites no authority for this novel proposition, and we therefore do not consider it. See Iowa R.App. P. 6.14(1)(c). Because Olson failed in advance of closing arguments to object to jury Instruction 17, the jury verdict form, and the sufficiency of the evidence of her unreasonable failure to mitigate damages, the district court erred in granting a new trial as a consequence of the failure to properly instruct the jury on Sumpter's mitigation defense.