Court Opinion

ID: 9696310
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:44:28.751614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:21.076697
License: Public Domain

PEDERSON, Justice,
concurring special-. iy-
The money verdict here is being set. aside because its size has no visible support in the-evidence. If any verdict is to be upheld, in spite of the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution, it must have some support in the evidence. Accordingly, I must concur but I think it might be helpful to trial judges and trial lawyers if I express some additional concerns.
When a trial court is confronted with an attack against a jury verdict and applies a stricter review than this court applies on appeal, it appears to me that the result will be more and more appeals — and we already have more than we can adequately handle. I do not mean to imply that this court has taken a recent quick change in philosophical direction. This appellate trend is longstanding and nationwide. See Wright, “The Doubtful Omniscience of Appellate Courts,” 44 Minn.L.Rev. 751 (1957).
In upholding the verdict in this case, the trial judge used statements that: (1) the evidence is “substantial enough,” (2) he “cannot say that the verdict is ... flagrantly outrageous,” and (3) the verdict is not “so extravagantly excessive, as to ... indicate that the jury was influenced by passion and prejudice.”
Justice Paulson did not use those terms in authoring the majority opinion, but concluded that when the total of all items of damages testified to falls substantially below the jury verdict, it is fair to say that support for the verdict cannot be found in the evidence. I agree that this is the standard that follows precedent. I question, however, the propriety of an appellate court offer of remittitur, which in effect is a substitute verdict which, on its face, appears to have no more visible support in the evidence than the jury’s verdict.