Court Opinion

ID: 9005749
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 13:27:51.445386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:11:16.591669
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom McMILLIAN, Circuit Judge, joins.
I write separately to offer some observations appropriate to this case on the subject of damages for pain and suffering. Many lawyers evidently regard such damages as a kind of tertium quid, neither compensatory nor exemplary, simply an inscrutable sop to a tort victim. This attitude manifests itself in a number of odd ways. For instance, in Arkansas, the jury is not asked to discount an award for future pain and suffering to present value as it is with respect to other sorts of future damages. See AMI Civil 3d, 2201, 2205, 2206, 2207, 2209, 2219. Lawyers will also typically describe pain and suffering damages as “non-economic,” further emphasizing the belief in their peculiar character. I suggest, too, that even economists have contributed to the confusion by calling those kinds of losses “non-pecuniary.”
The truth is, however, that these kinds of awards are necessarily compensatory in nature. Their aim, therefore, must be to make the sufferer as content or happy as he or she would have been but for the compensable injury. Putting the matter this way usefully highlights the difficulty that juries may often have in assessing damages for mental suffering. Without evidence of what kinds of things increase a particular plaintiffs subjective welfare, that is, his or her enjoyment of life, and without evidence of their cost, juries may feel that they are operating in the dark. It is a question whether, in a proper case, a court ought to direct a verdict on the question of damages for suffering because insufficient evidence on compensation has been presented, but no such request was made here; and, moreover, the custom seems to be to allow the question to go to the jury if there is sufficient evidence that pain and suffering actually occurred. This latter characteristic of current practice may simply be another manifestation of the inscrutable sop theory of pain and suffering damages. But there is another, perhaps more probable explanation for it. Jurors are regularly invited to use their common sense and the knowledge that they have in the ordinary affairs of life in arriving at their verdicts. Presumably, they are expected to arrive at an appropriate figure for compensating pain and suffering based on their experience with the general run of humanity. Besides, the correct measure of damages may well be the generic or mar*685ket value of the pain suffered, though this is not well developed in the cases.
Because a number fixed on in this fashion is likely to be reasonable if it falls within rather broad and elastic limits, an award for pain and suffering will only rarely be disturbed on appeal, especially since we review the award by asking whether it is “shocking” or “monstrous,” itself at least a partly subjective inquiry with each judge. (One wonders if there is some transcendent objective conscience that we are supposed to be consulting.) But in this case, the act that was committed wás so horrendous that no reasonable person could have found that the plaintiffs’ suffering was de minimis. It is true that the record on the extent of damages, not to mention what kind of compensation was appropriate, was not well developed. But zero is, in my mind, a wholly unacceptable number, indeed a shocking one, and I would therefore remand for a retrial on the issue of damages. It is just possible that the jurors regarded the prisoners’ life as so dismal and degraded before the rapes that the rapes did not diminish their enjoyment of it. But, in my view, no reasonable person could have come to that conclusion on this record. It is also possible that the jury meant to indicate by their verdict not that they had unanimously agreed to award the plaintiffs nothing, but, instead, that they were unable to agree on a particular number. But, even so, a new trial on damages would be required because the jury was hung. I do not read Cowans v. Wyrick, 862 F.2d 697 (8th Cir.1988), or Warren v. Fanning, 950 F.2d 1370 (8th Cir.1991), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 111, 121 L.Ed.2d 68 (1992), as being inconsistent with or contrary to this last observation.
I therefore respectfully dissent from the judgment of the court.