Court Opinion

ID: 9452388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:39:13.839507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:11.662524
License: Public Domain

KALODNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would reverse the Judgment of the District Court and remand with directions to grant a new trial for the reason that the jury’s verdict awarding $2500 damages in this wrongful death action was shockingly inadequate and could not under the fact situation which prevailed in this case, be regarded as a “compromise” verdict.
First as to the damages:
The undisputed evidence established that at the time of his death the 30-year-old decedent was receiving a monthly pension of $270 from the United States for a chest condition which had developed during his service as a member of the United States Air Force, and that he shared this pension with his wife. The evidence also established that the decedent was a licensed beautician with an earning capacity of about $90 a week and that when he was working he shared his earnings with his wife.
Putting aside his earnings as a beautician, since the record shows that he worked only sporadically because of a nervous condition, there remains undisputed that the decedent’s wife received $1620 annually from the decedent’s dis*499ability pension.1 It is settled that amounts received by a decedent from a disability pension are to be considered in calculating the pecuniary loss in a wrongful death action. See 81 A.L.R.2d 949 (1962) and the cases therein cited.2
In returning a $2500 damage award the jury here allowed only $1700 for the pecuniary loss suffered by the decedent’s widow, since the evidence established that the funeral bill was $800. That $1700 was just about one year’s pecuniary loss to the widow since she had been receiving $1620 annually from the decedent’s government pension. Since the decedent was but 30 years old at the time of his death the jury should have given effect to his life expectancy in fixing damages in accordance with the trial judge’s charge to that effect.
That the jury failed to take into consideration the decedent’s life expectancy and the certain circumstance that he would have received $3240 annually from his government pension for the rest of his life is evident from its $1700 calculation of the widow’s pecuniary loss.
The fact that the decedent’s widow remarried within a year of his death did not under settled law diminish rights fixed as of the date of the decedent’s death with respect to his pension. Indeed, the trial judge in the instant ease correctly charged the jury to that effect, when he said “The fact that she remarried has nothing to do with damages.”
The trial judge’s statement, “there was but little loss financially speaking to the widow in the death of her husband”, made in his Order denying the plaintiff’s motion for a new trial on the ground of inadequacy of the jury’s verdict, falls of its own weight in the light of the fact that an annual loss of $1620, derived from the decedent’s government pension, cannot be evaluated as “but little loss”.
Second, as to the trial court’s view, expressed in his Order denying a new trial, that “the jury compromised between no liability and a low verdict in plaintiff’s favor”:
That view cannot be reconciled with the trial judge’s own statement to the jury, in his charge, that under the circumstances which attended the defendant’s shooting of the decedent “ * * * this defendant was not justified in doing what he did”. One need only point out, as the trial judge did in his charge, that the evidence established that the decedent was unarmed when he created a disturbance in the defendant’s saloon, that the proportions of the disturbance were of such minor nature that “Four or five people were in there and apparently they didn’t pay too much attention to it. In other words, these people did not get out”; that the defendant saloonkeeper “might have chosen one of the other weapons he had there. He had three weapons there to protect his property with and he picked the revolver instead of the billy or blackjack”. As the trial judge in fact instructed the jury, liability was established if the defendant “used excessive force, more than necessary, and made no attempt to get away”.
What has been said establishes beyond question that there is no basis for the trial court’s view that “the jury compromised between no liability and a low verdict in plaintiff’s favor”.
The jury’s shockingly low award of damages in this case could not have been reasonably arrived at and the trial judge grossly abused his discretion in denying a new trial for that reason.

. One-half of the $270 monthly pension amounted to $135. Twelve months at $135 amounts to $1620.

. The trial judge correctly charged the jury to this effect,