Court Opinion

ID: 9740610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:38:25.425424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:19.127133
License: Public Domain

Mr. JUSTICE GREEN, dissenting: I agree with the majority that no reversible error occurred during the trial. I also agree that the determination of damages is generally a function of the jury and should not be overturned unless obviously the result of passion and prejudice. The jury’s discretion is not without limitation however. In Lau v. West Towns Bus Co., 16 Ill.2d 442, 453, 158 N.E.2d 63, 69, in ruling that a personal injury award was not excessive the court stated that the reviewing court had an "obligation to carefully scrutinize the record to determine whether the amount of the verdict is so large as to indicate passion and prejudice.” (Emphasis added.) Under the circumstances of the present case, the amounts of the awards are so large as to indicate that the jury was influenced by passion and prejudice. If the sum of $100,000 from each of the awards of $188,000 were available for investment at a return of 5% per annum, an income of $5,000 per year would be available for the benefit of each family without invading the principal. If any of the next of kin had major illness or other catastrophy, expenses so incurred could be defrayed from the principal. I can see no likelihood that either decedent here would have bestowed such pecuniary benfits upon their parents had they lived. The award for the next of kin of Debra Lynn Baird is larger than her projected lifetime earnings, as estimated by Dr. Cohen, to be $174,087.1 can reach no conclusion other than that the size of these awards arose from the passion of. sympathy for the next of kin in their tragic bereavement and the prejudice against the defendant for its responsibility in causing it. These awards are the largest for the wrongful death of an unmarried person leaving no descendants ever to come before the courts of review in this State. They are more than ZYz times as large as that ruled not to be excessive for the death of a 12-year-old boy in Mattyasovszky v. West Towns Bus Co., 21 Ill.App.3d 46, 313 N.E.2d 496. That decedent was also a person of high character with outstanding potential earning capacity and a demonstrated devotion to his family. Courts are reluctant to undertake the speculative task of setting a figure beyond which an award is excessive. It is a responsibility which must be assumed at some time, however. Otherwise, as awards get higher, the proponents of each will justify its reasonableness on the precedent of the approval of the highest previous award. In this case, even considering the determination made by the jury, its approval by the trial judge and the high capabilities and characters of the decedents, I consider verdicts in the sum of $150,000 each to be the highest that could be justified here. Accordingly, I would condition my affirmance of each judgment upon the filing in this court, by the plaintiff as to that judgment, of a remittur to the sum of $150,000. I would set aside any judgment to which no remittur was filed and remand that case to the trial court for a new trial as to damages only.