Court Opinion

ID: 9575901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:18:28.190839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:28.875123
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring in result) .
I concur in the result, since I can subscribe to the remission adjudged, but not to the conclusion reached that the verdict itself obviously was so excessive as to establish passion or prejudice in its rendition. I think there may have been excessiveness but that the verdict necessarily was not steeped in passion or prejudice.
I subscribe to the conclusions of the Wheat case mentioned, and also to those portions of Mr. Justice Crockett’s concurrence which support the following doctrine : That if three or more of the justices of this court decide: 1) That the excessiveness of the verdict itself appears to have been so aggravated as to convince us that it was conceived and born of passion or prejudice or both, the only fair thing to do is to grant a new trial unconditionally; or 2) that if a showing has been made in a timely and appropriate manner, which convinces us that passion and/or prejudice sired the verdict which we deem excessive, the only fair thing to do is to grant a new trial unconditionally; or 3) if we are convinced that the verdict was not merely ex*407cessive but so excessive as to appear quite unfair as it related to any injury shown, which verdict, however, appeared not to have been engendered by passion or prejudice, but perhaps by mistake, error in calculation, clerical error uncorrected, or other honest departure that resulted in a verdict unintended, quite unreasonable or for some other unexplained reason having no logical or sensible relation to the damage, a remission of what we consider to have been unfairly excessive should be adjudged, conditioned on the granting of a new trial if such remission be unacceptable to the beneficiary of the verdict.