Court Opinion

ID: 9488063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:35:16.508983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:39.391862
License: Public Domain

JON 0. NEWMAN, Chief Judge,
concurring:
This appeal has divided the panel three ways. Judge Jacobs takes the position, expressed in his dissent, that the judgment of the District Court, disallowing the jury’s award of punitive damages, should be af-. firmed. Judge Winter takes the position, expressed in his opinion for the Court, that a new trial should be ordered. I believe, for reasons set forth below, that the jury’s award of punitive damages should be upheld. That three-way division, if unresolved, would have left the case undecided. Believing that result to be unacceptable for a reviewing court, see United States v. Blume, 967 F.2d 45, 50 (2d Cir.1992) (Newman, J., concurring); United States v. O’Grady, 742 F.2d 682, 694 (2d Cir.1984) (in banc) (Newman, J., with whom Winter and Pratt, JJ., join, concurring), I have shifted my vote from reversal and remand for entry of judgment on the verdict to reversal and remand for a new trial. If a majority of the panel will not uphold the jury’s award, the result to which I believe the plaintiff is entitled, at least we should order a new trial, rather than affirm and thereby deny the plaintiff all opportunity to recover what the jury awarded. I therefore join Judge Winter’s opinion because I believe it is a reasonable outcome that comes as close as a majority of this panel is willing to rule towards affording the plaintiff relief.
What follows are my reasons for initially preferring entry of judgment on the jury’s verdict.
Question 22 told the jury:
You may award punitive damages to Action House only if you answered ‘Tes” to either Question One or Four and answered “No” to Questions Two and Five....
'While the wording of this interrogatory technically states two conditions that are necessary for an award of punitive damages, I think it is fairly to be read as instructing the jury that these are the only two conditions necessary. The interrogatory was understandably acceptable to the plaintiff. If the wording did not correctly reflect New York law, it was up to the defendant to object and ask the judge to tell the jury that these are not the only conditions, but that there must also be compensatory or at least nominal damages. I concede that the wording of this interrogatory is not as directive as the language in King v. Macri, 993 F.2d 294, 297 (2d Cir.1993), where the jury was explicitly told, ‘Tou may award punitive damages regardless of whether plaintiff has established actual damages.” Because of that jury instruction, we upheld the punitive damages award in King despite doubts as to whether the instruction correctly stated the law. Id. at 298. The language of Question 22 in the pending case is similarly strong enough to give the plaintiff the benefit of the award the jury made.
Furthermore, the plaintiff argued to the jury that Action House’s claim against Koolik was “approximately $863,000.” The jury’s punitive damages award was $362,000. The jury might well have thought that they could award compensatory damages for a normal wrong and punitive damages for an egregious wrong. This is not a case of a jury picking *1016some round number of punitive damages. The jurors awarded the same sum sought by the plaintiff as compensatory damages. To take that sum away after the jury was told that they could award punitive damages if only they answered “yes” to question one and “no” to question four, as they did, is extremely unfair to the plaintiff (and to the jury).
The question is not whether punitive damages are generally available only where compensatory damages are awarded. The question is, even if that is the usual rule in New York, what should happen when a jury is “instructed” (via an interrogatory) that they may act contrary to that rule and the defendant does not object? It is unfair to have a district judge give the “instruction” and then take from the plaintiff the benefit of the verdict that was returned in conformity with that instruction. If the “instruction” was plain eiTor, then a new trial would be warranted, but I am not persuaded that New York law is so clear that we can say that it is plain error to “instruct” a jury that it may award punitive damages without first awarding compensatory damages, at least in a case like this where the punitive damages awarded approximate the compensatory damages alleged to have been suffered.
For these reasons, I would reinstate the punitive damages award. Since a majority does not agree, I join Judge Winter’s opinion so that the plaintiff will, on retrial, at least have an opportunity to recover the damages that the first jury awarded.