Court Opinion

ID: 9689117
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:20:22.40377+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:45.008659
License: Public Domain

Hallows, J.
(concurring). For the purpose of speaking personally and not for the court, I write this concurring opinion.
Under the present practice an unconditional new trial must be granted. However, the court should give consideration to the adoption of a rule, analogous to the Powers rule, for the determination of apportionment of causal negligence at the trial level and the appellate level. True, in the past this court has said that apportionment of negligence is peculiarly within the discretion or province of the jury. See e.g., Granger v. Mutual Service Casualty Ins. Co. (1963), 19 Wis. (2d) 302, 304, 120 N. W. (2d) 140; Zeitlow v. Western Casualty & Surety Co. (1962), 17 Wis. (2d) 172, 176, 115 N. W. (2d) 758; Niedbalski v. Cuchna (1961), 13 Wis. (2d) 308, 318, 108 N. W. (2d) 576. But likewise, prior to the adoption of the Powers rule, this court had repeated on numerous occasions the then firmly established rule that “The matter of damages is peculiarly within the discretion of the jury.” See e.g., Spiegel v. Silver Lake Beach Enterprises (1957), 274 Wis. 439, 450, 451, 80 N. W. (2d) 401; Boyle v. Larzelere (1944), 245 Wis. 152, 155, 13 N. W. (2d) 528; Nelson v. Duluth St. R. Co. (1928), 197 Wis. 28, 30, 221 N. W. 388; West v. Day (1927), 193 Wis. 187, 195, 212 N. W. 648; Schmidt v. Riess (1925), 186 Wis. *315574, 579, 203 N. W. 362. It is now accepted that this court and trial courts can properly determine a reasonable sum for remittitur purposes when the amount of damages determined by the jury is found to be excessive. On the same basis this court or a trial court can properly determine a reasonable comparison of causal negligence when the jury’s determination is found to be excessive with respect to one of the parties. Having found a reasonable comparison, the court could implement it by giving an appropriate option following the general procedure used when the Powers rule is applied. Powers v. Allstate Ins. Co. (1960), 10 Wis. (2d) 78, 102 N. W. (2d) 393; Moldenhauer v. Faschingbauer (1967), 33 Wis. (2d) 617, 148 N. W. (2d) 112; Lucas v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. (1962), 17 Wis. (2d) 568, 117 N. W. (2d) 660.
It is true this court has not given much in the way of a standard by which the jury might compare the causal negligence; but as with the amount of damages, there is a range of comparison, determined by good sense, within which a jury should operate and beyond which the comparison should be corrected by the court and an option given to accept it. In Volkmann v. Fidelity & Casualty Co. (1946), 248 Wis. 615, 620, 22 N. W. (2d) 660, this court went so far as to state in reversing an apportionment of causal negligence:
“With reference to question 5, where the jury found the amount of causal negligence attributable to the plaintiff to be ten per cent, we consider it was greater than the amount found by the jury and was considerable, but under all the facts in the case we cannot say the court was justified to find as a matter of law that it amounted to more than fifty per cent.”
If, in cases such as the instant case, the court could determine the comparison of negligence and grant a new trial to the plaintiff subject to the defendant’s option to allow judgment to be entered against him based *316on the court’s determined apportionment, a substantial saving of both the parties’ time and money might be made. Such procedure, too, would comport with and subserve the policy of judicial economy, as does the Powers rule. This suggestion is a logical extension of Bielski v. Schulze (1962), 16 Wis. (2d) 1, 114 N. W. (2d) 105, and the Powers rule.
Of course, as applied to the plaintiff, this suggestion has one serious limitation because sec. 895.045, Stats., denies recovery to the plaintiff if his contributory negligence is as great as the negligence of the person against whom recovery is sought. This section was a liberalization of the old common-law rule which denied recovery completely if there existed the slightest contributory negligence. The full scope of an apportionment rule could only be attained by amending the statute to remove this bar. In justice, there is no reason why a plaintiff who is 52 percent negligent should not recover 48 percent of the amount of his damages. There is nothing magic about being equally at fault so that one should lose all and the other win all. Each tort-feasor should be responsible for his torts to the extent of his percentage of culpability, whether that be less than or more than 50 percent of the total; and conversely, each tort-feasor should be able to recover the amount of his damages caused by himself and another diminished in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to him.
The option theory applied to comparison of negligence has not been raised or considered by this court and the legislature has not been asked to amend sec. 895.045, Stats. I think both should be done.