Court Opinion

ID: 9536200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:56:12.048243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:28.940569
License: Public Domain

BARNES, Justice,
dissenting:
I must dissent from the majority opinion for the following reasons:
The factual basis for the majority opinion is that “There is no basis for defendants’ asserting that jury arrived at the percentage of negligence by working backwards from an arbitrary damage figure.” Relying upon the possibility that the jury may have changed its mind before the verdict was rendered, the majority finds that the jury’s inquiry of the Court made prior to the issuance of its verdict was not significant. I disagree.
In its inquiry to the Court, the jury indicated that it had found Mr. Whitehead 49% negligent and the defendants 51% negligent. Further, the jury indicated that it wished Mr. Whitehead to receive the sum of $4,500.00, but did not know how to complete the form to reach this result. Upon being apprised that the Court could not further instruct the jury, the jury reached the result it wished by awarding Mr. Whitehead $4,510.00. The fact that the jury indicated this was the result it wished to reach, the fact that it was the result reached and the fact that the percentages of negligence were changed in order to reach that result are, in my estimation, sufficient indications that the jury did not follow the instructions to the Court relating to comparative negligence.
I do not believe that the glaring similarity between the announced intent of the jury and the result reached was a mere coincidence. The amount of damages sued for was $8,666.35. If the percentage of negligence found to be present at the time the jury made its inquiry to the Judge, 51%, were applied to the amount sued for ($8,666.35 X 51%), the amount of damages would have been $4,386.18. However, the jury found that the total damages were $5,500.00. If we were to apply the same 51% negligence figure to that amount of *69total damages ($5,500.00 X 51%), the judgment would have been much less, $2,805.00. Thus, it is obvious to me that the jury, in order to reach its announced intention of awarding damages of $4,500.00 merely changed the negligence figures' — this time finding the defendants 82% negligent. When this new found degree of negligence is applied to the total amount of damages found ($5,500.00 X 82%), the judgment arrived at, $4,510.00, comes within a hair of the jury’s announced intention to award $4,500.00.
The Majority Opinion holds that the jury’s finding that the defendants were 82% negligent — an increase of over 30% from the jury’s original “finding” — was the result of a mere change of heart. As difficult as that argument is to accept, it becomes almost impossible to accept it when this degree of negligence is applied to the total damages found, and one sees that the jury awarded almost the exact amount of damages the jury wished to award when it originally found the defendants to be only 51% negligent. Although no positive proof of the jury’s misconduct is possible, the figures alone strongly indicate misconduct on the jury’s'part. I think such evidence more than justifies the granting of a new trial.
The view embraced by the Majority would virtually make it impossible to reverse a verdict in which impropriety on the jury’s part was obvious. I would not, unlike the Majority, require exact proof of the jury’s misconduct. Evidence strongly indicating misconduct should be sufficient.
In Garvin v. Harrell, 27 Okl. 373, 113 P. 186 (1910), this Court, speaking through Chief Justice Dunn, stated:
“A lawsuit is at its best, a misfortune, yet when a citizen feels that his rights have been invaded and other means have failed, it is the only method prescribed by the law of the land for the vindication thereof, . A resort to law is usually at the unsuccessful conclusion of all other efforts for adjustment, and all parties confidently appeal to the courts with the abiding conviction that they are right and that justice will be administered unpolluted and exact. It is essential to the well-being of society that this confidence be encouraged and sustained, and that the faith of the people in the courts be not shattered. In order that this may be so, the jury, the trial, and all the proceedings connected with them should not only be free of wrongdoing, but their administration should be so untainted, free, clear, and above board that there will be no room for suspicion that the conclusion reached was influenced by other matters than an unbiased consideration of the law and the evidence . . . . the result should come to them both untainted by a breath of suspicion that aught else than the law of the land and their evidence was even remotely responsible for the verdict.”
In the case at hand, the action of the jurors makes the verdict reached by them strongly suspect — this alone should be sufficient to warrant a new trial. Accordingly, I would hold that the trial court erred in refusing to grant such relief.
I am authorized to state that LAVENDER, C. J., IRWIN, V. C. J., and WILLIAMS, J., join in this dissenting opinion.