Court Opinion

ID: 9534866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:43:15.50701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:32:57.072565
License: Public Domain

*94URBIGKIT, Chief Justice,
specially concurring.
I concur, but write further in analysis that the proven injury in this case reasonably justified the damage award and we need not apply an extreme test for what was fairly and reasonably determined by jury verdict. Specifically, I question our continued lack of judicial responsibility in jury supervision encompassed within characterizations of “shock[ing] the judicial conscience”, “an irresistible inference that passion, prejudice or other improper cause had invaded the trial[ ]” or “so excessive as to strike mankind, at the first blush, as being beyond all measure unreasonable or outrageous.” 1 I suggest we abandon this language because a requirement that an award must “shock” an appellate jurist’s conscience is no standard because it merely personalizes the appellate outcome. It is a test that exists without boundaries except those intrinsic to the mores of the trial judge or appellate court as decisional concepts of personal persuasion and political proclivity.
The intrinsic facts revealed within the recent course of Wyoming cases convince me that application of an asserted test of shock to the judicial conscience is a nonstandard in reality serving for a result oriented, unprincipled disposition by application of unboundaried decision. I have written before on this subject when the jury verdict itself was not justified on liability and apply equally the same concern as a test for either an excessive or insufficient damage award. See Medlock v. Merrick, 786 P.2d 881 (Wyo.1990), Urbigkit, Justice, dissenting; Clarke v. Vandermeer, 740 P.2d 921 (Wyo.1987); and DeJulio v. Foster, 715 P.2d 182 (Wyo.1986).
Three cases serve for illustration. First is Brittain v. Booth, 601 P.2d 532 (Wyo.1979), where the rule was used to justify the $10,000 award for personal injury after the incurrence of $7,800 in medical expenses. The result in that case was clearly not justice. My judicial conscience would have been then, and certainly is now, shocked at the resulting net of the $5,100 actual award where the injured person suffered a thirty-five to forty percent total disability. Brittain cannot then be related to the $425,000 award against the Union Pacific Railroad Company for injury damages where this court added a further criteria of justification of “erroneous basis” to the “passion, prejudice or bias” test. Union Pacific R. Co. v. Richards, 702 P.2d 1272, 1278-79 (Wyo.1985). Neither of these cases can be correlated to the reduction impressed by remitter against the successful plaintiff in Town of Jackson v. Shaw, 569 P.2d 1246 (Wyo.1977), where the rule was stated, but did not accord with the reduction made in verdict. If Town of Jackson was a reasonable appellate decision, there is certainly no semblance of the same test in reason and fairness for justice in either Brittain or Richards. Unnecessarily, extremity of language in criteria invites not only result oriented adjudication, but discriminatory and uncontrolled results.
In this accelerative society,2 maintenance of the jury system requires vigilance so *95that relevance and rationality are retained. My persuasion remains constant that judicial action is required when the cognitive filters of the jury do not provide justice. See Medlock, 786 P.2d 881; Clarke, 740 P.2d 921; and DeJulio, 715 P.2d 182. We should apply a test of rationality to jury verdict supervision, not absolute unconditional acceptance except when particularized case features call for a rule disregard and result oriented decision. See Cates v. Eddy, 669 P.2d 912 (Wyo.1983).
It is my contention that we should substitute a rule of reason and recognition of properly exercised discretion for the post-event shock to the judicial conscience supervisory review applied test for jury verdicts. In assessment, we should recognize this separate function provided by the jury in evaluation of general damages and special damages as its deliberative requirement. Standards for review should exist identically whether emplaced by the trial court in answering motions for a new trial or judgments notwithstanding the verdict or by the appellate court in assessing the exercised discretion of the trial court for direct appellate review of a contended improper verdict.
Actual or special damages could be assessed in review under our traditional substantial evidence standard and general damages could be reviewed within the province of the jury to exercise discretion in alignment and allocation of the intangibles of hurt, pain and future loss. Review of actual damage awards are appropriate under the substantial evidence standard because such damages are calculable from the evidence available at trial. See Boyd v. State, 747 P.2d 1143 (Wyo.1987). The appropriate standard of review of the jury function could simply ask whether there was substantial evidence to justify the award.
Review of general damage awards are also appropriate under recognition of a discretionary determination because such damages are not subject to precise calculation and are designed to compensate the victim in full for all harm proximately caused, which includes intangible damages. Martinez v. City of Cheyenne, 791 P.2d 949, 959 (Wyo.1990). The jury is asked to determine the appropriate damages and should be reversed only upon a clear showing of abuse of discretion. Because we have said “abuse of discretion has as its anchor point the query of ‘whether the court [or jury] could reasonably conclude as it did,’ ” Oien v. State, 797 P.2d 544, 549 (Wyo.1990) (quoting Noetzelmann v. State, 721 P.2d 579, 583 (Wyo.1986)), our review could give deference to the decision of the fact finder where some evidence exists in the record for support. The dispositive question for our standard of review would ask if the jury could reasonably conclude as it did if all favorable inferences are accorded the position taken by the jury. This would be similar to the standard now used to review a directed verdict. Cody v. Atkins, 658 P.2d 59, 61 (Wyo.1983). I argue our use of the “shock [to] the judicial conscience” standard reflects an inadequate appreciation of the function we have asked the jury to perform and, in fact, has no relation to jury performance or appropriate judicial supervision.
The use of these proposed standards of review would streamline our review of appeals for motions for new trials or judgments notwithstanding the verdict when those motions are grounded on excessive or inadequate jury awards. See Cody, 658 P.2d at 63-64. Such standards of review would focus the appellate court’s attention on the function of the trial court when ruling on these motions for new trial or judgments notwithstanding the verdict. We expect the trial court to defer to the fact finders when ruling on these motions for new trial or judgments notwithstanding the verdict. See Medlock, 786 P.2d at 883. Under the proposed standards, we could expect the trial court to also recognize the discretion utilized by the jury to estimate the harm to the plaintiff. From the vantage point of such additional deference, the trial court could determine that the size of an award was an abuse of the jury’s discretion only if the award could not be reason*96ably justified by assuming “the evidence in favor of the successful party to be true, leaving out of consideration entirely the evidence in conflict, and assigning every favorable inference to the evidence of the successful party that can be reasonably and fairly drawn from it.” Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc. v. Admiral Beverage Corp., 638 P.2d 1272, 1274 (Wyo.1982).
Review for the appellate court could then be the same standard used by the trial court in granting or denying the judgment notwithstanding the verdict or motion for new trial grounded on an excessive or inadequate verdict. The standards of review would be the same and easily identifiable by the appellate court — if the jury cannot be said to have abused its discretion in making its award, then a judgment notwithstanding the verdict or motion for new trial grounded on an excessive or inadequate verdict would be an abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court. Lassiter v. International Union of Operating Engineers, 349 So.2d 622 (Fla.1976). As well, if an appellate court could not say the verdict was an abuse of discretion after assuming “ ‘the evidence in favor of the successful party to be true, leaving out of consideration entirely the evidence in conflict, and assigning every favorable inference to the evidence of the successful party that can be reasonably and fairly drawn from it,’ ” Seaton v. State of Wyo. Highway Com’n, Dist. No. 1, 784 P.2d 197, 207 (Wyo.1989) (quoting Reese v. Dow Chemical Co., 728 P.2d 1118, 1120 (Wyo.1986)), the jury verdict would stand undisturbed.
The Florida courts appear to have already begun moving in this direction.
Two factors unite to favor a very restricted review of an order denying a motion for new trial on ground of excessive verdict. The first of these is the deference due the trial judge, who has had the opportunity to observe the witnesses and to consider the evidence in the context of a living trial rather than upon a cold record. The second factor is the deference properly given to the jury’s determination of such matters of fact as the weight of the evidence and the quantum of damages.
Lassiter, 349 So.2d at 627. The court reviewed the trial court under its abuse of discretion standard.
The obsequiousness granted to the “shock the judicial conscience” standard of review for jury awards arose in Coleman v. Southwick, 6 American Decisions 253 (N.Y.1812). There the editor of the New York Evening Post sued the publisher of The Albany Register for libel. Following an award of $1,500 and a motion for a new trial, the defendant appealed. That court indicated: “The question of damages was within the proper and peculiar province of the jury. It rested in their sound discretion, under all the circumstances of the case * * *.” Id. at 257 (emphasis added). Had the opinion ended there, today’s standard of review might well be “abuse of discretion;” but the opinion added:
[A]nd unless the damages are so outrageous as to strike every one with the enormity and injustice of them, and so as to induce the court to believe that the jury must have acted from prejudice, partiality or corruption, we cannot, consistently with the precedents, interfere with the verdict.
Id. at 257.
While shocks to my conscience as an appellate jurist usually come from reading “rights skeptical” judicial opinions3 and *97the corrosive effects of those opinions on traditional understandings of due process and equal protection, I cannot endorse such a personalized reaction to be appropriate for a standard of review.
We should recognize that in some cases what may be too much for a jury verdict, may in many other cases, by application of the same conscience shock rule, justify too little to be awarded. Cf. Powers v. Johnson, 562 So.2d 367 (Fla.App.1990) (citing Butte v. Hughes, 521 So.2d 280 (Fla.App.1988)); Thornburg v. Pursell, 446 So.2d 713 (Fla.App.1984); and Hernandez v. City of New York, 156 A.D.2d 641, 549 N.Y.S.2d 139 (1989). See also Tarin v. City Nat. Bank of Miami, 557 So.2d 632 (Fla.App.1990).
I am comfortable with a test of the appropriateness of judicial results embodied in reasonableness and need not encounter shock of my judicial conscience to find cause for exercise of supervisory responsibility to reject injustice. I reserve “shock [to] the judicial conscience” for deprivation of constitutional rights in general and lack of due process or equal protection in specific. Additur and remitter should not be dirty words in delivered justice to either the plaintiff or defendant. Of course in this case, passion was applied in the jury decision. Any thinking human being would be called into passionate evaluation of the liability facts and the extent of injury. That, however, is not the kind of humanistic concern for right and wrong here applied by the jury that could be characterized as either lacking reason or rejecting justification for applied justice.
The failure of judicial supervision of the American jury as a defense for the system is not without comment and current academic consideration. See, for example, in particular within its many excellent articles, Daniels, The Question of Jury Competence and the Politics of Civil Justice Reform: Symbols, Rhetoric, and Agenda-Building, 52 Law & Contemp.Probs. 269 (1989). Equally impressive in analysis of the operation of the civil jury within an accelerated society and a complex social and economic system is the extensive analysis of Ansaldi, Texaco, Pennzoil and the Revolt of the Masses: A Contracts Postmortem, 27 Hous.L.Rev. 733, 840 (1990) (footnote omitted):4
The jury verdict in the Texaco case, upheld on appeal under a highly deferential standard of review, is a classic case of “the wire snapping back” — a revolt of the masses not so much against the legal order as a whole as against an aberrant vision of legal obligation presented to them by a specialized sub-community to which they did not belong, a model of justice and fair dealing having no basis in the mores of mass society. What does the case mean to lawyers and the legal system? Ultimately, it signals a serious threat to the place reserved for elite values in contract law.
Even a casual review of current cases reveals that the extreme protective envelope provided by this court by definition, if not necessarily by practice, is not generally followed in other jurisdictions. In recent case law, the state of Idaho has delineated in a series of decisions a modernized adaptation. Sanchez v. Galey, 112 Idaho 609, 733 P.2d 1234 (1986); Quick v. Crane, 111 Idaho 759, 727 P.2d 1187 (1986); Dinneen v. Finch, 100 Idaho 620, 603 P.2d 575 (1979).5
*98Because many appellate issues are resolved under the abuse of discretion standard, we may well improve our supervision of the jury system and blunt the academic criticism occasioned by our traditional standard of review.6 A current example will serve for illustration. Otis Mason, who died of leukemia in 1979, had been employed as an instructor at the Coast Guard Engineering School in Yorktown, Virginia. The Coast Guard purchased benzene for his use and others at the school which was a very commonly utilized industrial and commercial product well-known to amateur and professional mechanics. Mason filed suit against the supplier of the test kit containing the benzene and, following his death, his widow was substituted as plaintiff in the survival action. In the 1990 federal court decision, the jury awarded $4 million for his personal injuries, $5,025,000 for his survivor’s wrongful death claim and punitive damages of $25 million.7 The result shocked my conscience, but did not shock the trial judge who applied the Coleman, 6 American Decisions 253, ratio decidendi of 1812 to a 1990 economics problem of international competition. Mason v. Texaco, Inc., 741 F.Supp. 1472 (D.Kan.1990); Mason v. Texaco, Inc., 862 F.2d 242 (10th Cir.1988); Mason v. Gerin Corp., 231 Kan. 718, 647 P.2d 1340 (1982).
We would simplify our review if we' apply the principle of deference which is intrinsic to questions of abuse of discretion. See Farber v. Massillon Bd. of Educ., 908 F.2d 65 (6th Cir.1990). Applying the standard of review that I argue should be adopted by the court, leads me to join the majority in affirming the award. The dimensions of reasonableness, discretion and deference which accompany the proposed standards of review provide ample space for my concurrence without resorting to “shock” or “irresistible inference [of] passion” which could be otherwise left to interpersonal relationships. The damage award to Mr. Cossairt in this case was substantial, but so was the damage caused to him— damage which is tragic and undoubtedly lifelong.
Again, my complaint is not with the majority looking for a traditional standard of review for jury awards and motions for new trials — my dissatisfaction is with what those traditional standards of review really are. I respectfully urge this court to look to the 1990’s and not to incidental or accidental language of a by-gone era to enumerate a standard of review for jury awards and motions for new trials when the amount of damage awarded or not awarded is in question.

. Although phrased somewhat differently, the perception that is advanced by this approach was defined by the Minnesota appeal court in the analysis of an ATV injury case, Erickson By and Through Bunker v. American Honda Motor Co., 455 N.W.2d 74, 78 (Minn.App.1990):
Second, Burnsville argues there is no competent evidence to support the damages for pain and disability and impairment of future earning capacity. The jury awarded |22,000 in damages for past pain and disability, $90,-000 for future pain and disability, and $688,-000 for loss of future earning capacity. The trial court found the verdict amounts were well within the potential dollar parameters for the facts of the case, and we agree. * * * A rehabilitation psychologist presented several professional career scenarios that he said could have been reasonably expected for Christopher based on his school records and his parents' educational achievements. There was sufficient evidence to support the damages for pain and disability and impairment of future earning capacity.

. See the dialogue in Goldberg, Bridging the Gap, 76 A.B.A. J. 44, 46 (Sept. 1990), where Roberta Ramo recognized:
[T]he law itself has changed. Both the complexity of the law and the rate of change have so accelerated in the last decade that it is virtually impossible to teach the law. It is increasingly difficult to acquire and maintain competence in any area. If we don’t under*95stand that, then we’re missing a fundamental change in practice.

. See Elfenbein, The Myth of Conservatism as a Constitutional Philosophy, 71 Iowa L.Rev. 401, 425-26 n. 124 (1986) (quoting Sager, Rights Skepticism and Process-Based Responses, 56 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 417, 441 (1981) and emphasis in original):
“The crucial operative aspect of rights skepticism is its attitude toward the resolution of [the] systemic tension [between majority rule and individual rights]. When a rights-supporting value of the Constitution is understood to be in arguable conflict with majority conduct, the rights skeptic insists that the case for the recognition of the right be made only under circumstances of textual, historical, or structural certainty; otherwise the majoritari-an result must prevail. Under this conception, rights are narrowly defined exceptions to an otherwise prevailing general commitment to majority rule.
An hierarchical paradigm supports this lopsided view of rights and majority will. Rights *97skepticism places majoritarian virtues on a plane different from and higher than the rights component of our political tradition. Rights themselves are viewed in this model as deriving from a prior commitment to majority rule; rights exist because they have been endorsed by political majorities in the course of the proposal and ratification of the Constitution and its amendments."

. An interesting comparison can be made between the substantively dissimilar yet logically comparable subjects of Texaco with the topic found in Raveson, Advocacy and Contempt: Constitutional Limitations on the Judicial Contempt Power, 65 Wash.L.Rev. 477 (1990).

. It should be recognized that what shocked the public and consequently the legislature may not so easily shock the judicial conscience. Misinformation is the greatest cause of public misconception of the operation of the justice delivery system. However, realism, rationality and essential justice will ultimately, if not unilaterally, be defined and weighed by public perception for which the jury becomes the immediate ba*98rometer. Public perception that some juries provide extreme results will inevitably adversely affect fair justice in later juries which are perceptive to community standards and reaction. The wire will snap back and injustice may tend to cultivate resulting injustice reactively and retroactively.

. See generally Ansaldi, supra, 27 Hous.L.Rev. at 840; Daniels, supra, 52 Law & Contemp. Probs. 269; and Vidmar, Foreword: Empirical Research and the Issue of Jury Competence, 52 Law & Contemp.Probs. 1 (1989).

. The jury award, which was approved by the presiding judge as punishment against the major American corporation for selling the government what it had ordered, was 0.31% of net worth and 1.92% of annual net earnings after taxes.