Court Opinion

ID: 9545863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:21:08.744002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:39.981863
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I concur. The case is indeed a rarity in which a verdict is arrived at through collective prejudice or passion of a whole or even part of a whole jury. That would mean that the influence of animus against a party to the litigation or the class to which he or it belongs or because of favoritism for a party or his class must have permeated the jury. But when such does influence the verdict, then the fact triers (jury) are as corrupted an instrument for the accomplishment of justice as is a judge who is biased or prejudiced for or against a litigant or his class when he sits on the trial of a case. The very springs of justice are then polluted and a fair and just trial is hardly to be had.
And I agree that the disproportion between possible or probable damages and damages granted must be great indeed for such an ill will, animus or favoritism, as the case may be, to be implied from it. What is usually swept within the orbit of passion or prejudice-induced verdicts are those verdicts which are so large or so small, because of errors of judgment only, compared to what should have been arrived at by reasonably judging minds. But in those cases the deduction that the size of the verdict was due *431to passion or prejudice unattended by evidence of facts from which such emotional reactions were in fact present should not be made. I agree that there was not available to the defendants in this case any such evidence; that, therefore, the statement of the court whether included in the judgment of the court or aliunde thereof that the amount of $17,000 showed such influence is without foundation and for that reason must be ignored.
HENRIOD, J., concurs in the result.