Court Opinion

ID: 9859665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 22:18:23.387406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:12:23.130289
License: Public Domain

ORDER DENYING REHEARING AND AMENDING OPINION
Each of the parties has filed a petition for rehearing. These petitions, together with briefs in support of and resistance to them, have been considered en banc by the court.
The petitions have presented a large number of issues, all of which have been carefully considered. Two merit special mention. Both concern a question of preservation of error.
Defendants-appellees challenge the court’s holding that their challenge to plaintiffs’ theory of liability was lost when explained in a jury instruction. This.court’s opinion found there was no objection to the instruction, a finding defendants vigorously challenge. Defendants correctly note they did object to the instruction. The flaw in the present challenge is in the nature of that objection. It did not assail plaintiffs’ legal theory (the point raised on appeal). The objection was confined to two things: (1) there was insufficient evidence to submit interference claim; and (2) plaintiffs were not real parties in interest.
Like many disputes in this complex litigation, this one is not entirely free from doubt because plaintiffs did assail the theory at other points during the trial. But we continue to think the instruction became the law of the case, and do not think our persistence is hypertechnical.
The second point we specially note has to do with plaintiffs’ challenge to the reduction in the punitive damage award, a challenge we do think is hypertechnical. Plaintiffs contend error was not preserved for this reduction when not spelled out in the assignment of error in which defendants challenge punitive damages.
Whatever deficiency plaintiffs allege in the scope of defendants’ assignment challenging the punitive damage award, they cannot suggest we introduced the matter into the dispute. Defendants complained of the sufficiency of evidence of punitive damage at every stage of the trial, and challenged the award in a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial.
Defendants’ complaint could be answered easily if we, as we have in the past, claimed inherent authority to order remittiturs. See Castner v. Wright, 256 Iowa 638, 659, 128 N.W.2d 885, 886 (1964) (supplemental opinion). The claim of our inherent authority dates from the earliest days of our court. See Gower v. Carter, 3 Iowa 243, 256 (1856). We would claim this inherent authority only in rare situations and with reluctance. We need not rely on inherent authority here because of a special rule that in some situations intermingles concepts of excessiveness and appropriateness.
Prior to our decision in this appeal, because we heretofore refused to review punitive damage awards as to amounts, we established no precedent regarding error preservation on the precise question plaintiffs raise. There is however ample precedent on a closely analogous question in the field of *404compensatory damages. There we have consistently intermixed the concepts of appropriateness of damages and extent of damages. This has occurred routinely in considering motions for a new trial under Iowa rule of civil procedure 224 on a claim of passion and prejudice. The rule is that a new trial should not be awarded, but rather a remitti-tur should be ordered for the excess, “even in the absence of passion and prejudice [when] justice may be effectuated by ordering a remittitur....” Schmitt v. Jenkins Truck Lines, Inc., 170 N.W.2d 632, 659 (Iowa 1969). See also Hurtig v. Bjork, 258 Iowa 155, 160, 138 N.W.2d 62, 65 (1965); Larew v. Iowa State Highway Comm’n, 257 Iowa 64, 68,130 N.W.2d 688, 690 (1964); Castner v. Wright, 256 Iowa 638, 657, 127 N.W.2d 583, 594 (1964) (initial opinion).
We find no merit in plaintiffs’ complaint that defendants’ challenge to the punitive damage award did not carry with it a challenge to its extent. This court had ample authority to consider the extent, as well as the appropriateness of, that award.
We have considered the parties’ other contentions and find them without merit. The opinion did contain one clerical and one substantive error. The substantive error, not challenged in the petitions for further review, related to the reduction of punitive damage awards which were in the nature of a remitti-tur. We omitted according the option of electing a new trial to these plaintiffs. See Hester v. Meewes, 256 Iowa 633, 636-37, 126 N.W.2d 308, 310 (1964) (court without power to order reduction of jury award; plaintiff must be accorded option of new trial).
Pursuant to Iowa Supreme Court rule 8.1 our opinion, filed September 21, 1994, is amended as follows:
[Editor’s Note: amendments incorporated for purposes of publication.]
All petitions for rehearing are denied and overruled.