Court Opinion

ID: 9848394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:18:34.325303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:16.577699
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring and dissenting).
The appellant asked for a new trial because the trial court erred in failing to instruct that the jury was not to consider amounts paid for hospitalization by an in*4surance company, for special damage incurred. Plaintiff’s counsel said he did not argue such contended error because the jury might consider his client as being greedy for asking for a double damage recovery.
It occurs to me that there is not too much substance to counsel’s argument here that, albeit he may have been right, any argument he may have made to the jury in pressing his point, may have hurt his cause. Counsel occasionally find themselves impaled on the horns of a strategic or procedural dilemma in deciding which route to travel, but it is no answer to say that for the first time on appeal his self-inflicted wounds should be healed by an appellate court antibiotic. With this aspect of the case I concur in the main opinion’s conclusion.
My colleague, Mr. Justice Ellett, author of the main opinion, sluffs off the question of an additur here of $700 to a $500 verdict because it “is not contested here.” If the plaintiff complains on appeal that a $500 verdict was awry because of an errant court’s failure properly to instruct, certainly the $700 additur equally was offensive to plaintiff. At least it would submerge a big frog in a little pond. In this respect the main opinion indirectly sanctions the additur by affirming the verdict, —all with what appears to be the seemingly innocuous gratuity that the question of the additur “is not contested here.” I think it was an integral part of this appeal, since, if this court had rejected the $500 verdict, no logic could have supported the validity of the $700 additur' — except that advanced in Bodon v. Suhrmann,1 to which I dissented. There I pointed out that the trial court could add $1 to a $100 verdict and under the additur concept effectively could deny the plaintiff a new trial, even though the damages obviously were inadequate. This sort of tampering with jury verdicts easily could destroy the function of the jury entirely, — and the sound reasoning and decision anent the court addi-tur function vs. the constitutional jury function, expressed by the U. S. Supreme Court case of Dimick v. Scheidt,2 after a third of a century, never yet have been questioned save by inferior courts and this court in Bodon v. Suhrmann.
It is interesting to note that the author of the main opinion in the instant case was the trial court in Bodon v. Suhrmann. He did not grant any additur in that case. It must have come as a surprise to him when this court, for the first time on appeal, granted an additur, — which I think was none of this court’s business. At best it was a usurpation of the trial court’s authority. The trial judge in the Bodon case, presently one of my esteemed colleagues on this court, condones an additur *5granted at the trial court level because the point wasn’t raised, here, but so far as I know, apparently never has condoned one before.
I agree with the affirmance by this court of the $500 jury verdict, but not any incidental, implied or unexplained affirmance of the trial court’s “verdict” for the $700.
The case should be affirmed except as to the $700, but remanded with instructions to eliminate such $700 amount.

. 8 Utah 2d 42, 327 P.2d 826 (1958).

. 293 U.S. 474, 55 S.Ct. 296, 79 L.Ed. 603 (1935), 95 A.L.R. 1150.