Court Opinion

ID: 9530647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:02:02.968728+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:12.605498
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(concurring in the result)—I agree with the majority that the trial judge does not, in his order, give adequate objective criteria to justify a new trial. A memorandum or oral opinion could have been helpful.
From the record before us, I can see nothing unconscionable in the verdict. The $100 verdict might well have been allocated $20.95 for car damages, $30 for medical treatment, and the remainder of almost $50 for 4 days of neck soreness and headaches. This would mean that the jury simply refused to believe that the plaintiff’s ear and hearing difficulties were attributable to this relatively slight impact, and that was their prerogative.
*82My only reason for encumbering the records with a special concurrence in this case is to voice my objection to the use of Powell v. Continental Baking Co. (1957), 49 Wn. (2d) 753, 306 P. (2d) 757, as a measuring rod to determining whether or not the trial court erred in granting a new trial. If that case is to be the criterion by which we judge, we will affirm very few cases in which a new trial has been granted on discretionary grounds. I expressed my views on discretionary new trials in footnote 2 in the case of Sullivan v. Watson (1962), 60 Wn. (2d) 759, 765, 375 P. (2d) 501; and one of the cases in which (in my opinion) we permitted the pendulum to swing too far was the Powell case.
Ott, C. J., concurs with Hill, J.