Court Opinion

ID: 9704557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:39:46.159895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:16.829078
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, J.,
dissenting.
¶ 1 While I join the remainder of the Majority Opinion, I respectfully dissent to the Majority’s decision granting relief to Appellant on her claim that the verdict interrogatory and the court’s charge on damages were erroneous. Appellant failed to offer a timely and specific objection at trial to the charge and interrogatory on loss of life’s pleasures and enjoyments of life, and on loss of feeling of well-being. Mitchell’s only objection was that emotional distress and anxiety, and embarrassment and humiliation, were not explained in the jury charge, and should have been categorized as a component of pain and suffering in the jury verdict interrogatory:
Trial Court: Any objections, corrections? Anything you want me to say or not say?
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Defense Counsel: Initially, Your Hon- or, I just noticed on the Jury Verdict Interrogatories you have (c) and (d) here which we have not told the Jury about and which, in my opinion, properly belong under (a) anyhow. I think that’s how you defined it for them.
Trial Court: Objection noted. Anything else?
Defense Counsel: You’re going to let it go out without explaining it to them?
Trial Court: Yes, I think it’s adequately explained.
N.T. 10/13/00 at 460-61. Only the thirteenth issue’s challenge regarding the charge on emotional distress and anxiety, therefore, remains preserved.
Error in a charge is sufficient ground for a new trial, if the charge as a whole is inadequate or not clear or has a tendency to mislead or confuse rather than clarify a material issue. A charge will be found adequate unless the issues are not made clear to the jury or the jury was palpably misled by what the trial judge said or unless there is an omission in the charge which amounts to fundamental error. A reviewing court will not grant a new trial on the adequacy of the charge unless there is a prejudicial omission of something that is basi[c] or fundamental. In reviewing a trial court’s charge to the jury, we must not *380take the challenged words out of context of the whole of the charge, but must look to the charge in its entirety.
Stewart v. Motts, 539 Pa. 596, 606, 654 A.2d 535, 540 (1995) (quotations and citations omitted).
¶ 2 The notes of testimony show that the trial court’s instruction on damages tracked Pennsylvania Suggested Standard Civil Jury Instructions, § 6.01E and F (2003) on pain and suffering, which includes distress within pain and suffering damages:
Now, what is pain and suffering? Pain and suffering comprises the following: Physical pain, mental anguish, discomfort, inconvenience, and distress.
Now, you have to analyze the testimony to determine whether or not there’s [sic] facts presented to that which would allow you to conclude that the Plaintiff has suffered any or all of those items that comprise [sic] pain and suffering. If you find that he has sustained any or all of those items, then you have to award him just, compensation. If you find that he has suffered in the past, the present and the future, you must award him compensation for past, present and future pain and suffering.
So that’s how you have to analyze pain and suffering. They’re the items- that comprise it.
N.T. 10/13/00 at 454-55 (emphasis added). The jury verdict interrogatories on damages, however, read as follows:
3. State the amount of damages, if any, sustained by the Plaintiff, Robert J. Carpinet, as a result of the accident.
(a) For past, present, and future pain and suffering.
(b) For past, present, and future loss of the pleasures and enjoyments of life.
(c) For past, present, and future emotional distress and anxiety.
(d) For past, present, and future embarrassment and humiliation.
(e) For the past, present, and future loss of feeling of well-being.
(f) For scarring and disfigurement.
Jury Verdict Interrogatories, at 2. After deliberations, the jury returned and its foreman read the verdict in open court, in which damages were awarded in the amounts of $300,000.00 for (a), $200,000.00 for (b), $75,000.00 for (c), $0.00 for (d), $25,000.00 for (e), and $0.00 for (f).
¶ 3 Reading the instructions and interrogatories as a whole, I would find that the jury was not misled into awarding for distress twice, i.e., as a component of “(a)” pursuant to the charge, and as a separate award again in “(c).” The court explicitly instructed the jury that distress was part of pain and suffering, and, in contrast to its elaboration on other potential damages, provided no further instruction on “emotional distress” as a separate and additional category of recovery for distress. Therefore, no reason exists to depart from well-settled legal presumptions that juries follow instructions, See Commonwealth v. Jones, 811 A.2d 1057 (Pa.Super.2002), and render inherently consistent verdicts in accord with the evidence presented. See Kit v. Mitchell, 771 A.2d 814, 818-19 (Pa.Super.2001). The' jury could easily understand from this record that one award for distress was permissible in the case, and such award was recorded under (c) on the verdict interrogatories. Accordingly, I would find no reversible error.