Court Opinion

ID: 9457849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:34:58.755059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:32.136467
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
With deference to my colleagues, I dissent. The majority opinion recognizes that there are cogent arguments that the District Court may have erred in trial rulings and instructions on unseaworthiness. But it pretermits consideration of those arguments on the premise that no substantial rights of the parties were affected,' a conclusion which I am unable to understand.
In the majority’s analysis leading to the conclusion that no substantial rights of the plaintiff were affected, the key step is that such conclusion is required by the jury’s answers [renumbered] 2 through 6. The answers are said to have that commanding effect because, as the opinion states in its last sentence, “answers [2 through 6] establish that there are no recoverable damages in this case. . . . under the claim based on unseaworthiness.” Earlier the opinion had said, “Unless we set aside one or more of the jury’s answers to questions which we have numbered 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 in footnote 2, supra, the plaintiff-appellant has not maintained her burden of showing that any damages are recoverable on the claim based on unseaworthiness.”
Answer 2 has not been set aside. In fact, the majority decline to set it aside (at the behest of the plaintiff, because plaintiff did not object to the interrogatory at trial and the instructions concerning the interrogatory were held not to be plain error). Answer 2 remains in the case as an assessment by the jury of damages under some standard. As Judge Rives notes in footnote 5, Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc., et al., 398 U.S. 375, 90 S.Ct. 1772, 26 L.Ed.2d 339 (1970), left for future decisions the development of a standard for damages for wrongful death resulting from unseaworthiness. Unless and until it is decided that the standard of damages which the jury in this case did employ — the economic value of a decedent’s life — is not the correct measure of damages for wrongful death resulting from unseaworthiness, it is impossible to pretermit consideration of allegedly erroneous rulings and charges relating to unseaworthiness on the ground that plaintiff has failed to show that she was damaged.
The fact that the amount of damages was found to be $150 is irrelevant. The principle would be the same if it were $150,000. The majority imply that the measure given to the jury, the economic value of decedent’s life, is not the correct standard for wrongful death resulting from unseaworthiness, but they do not so hold. They state that for want of instructions the jury was left to speculate, yet they decline to set aside the finding of $150 in damages. Having refused to set it aside, they not only decline to give any effect to it but affirmatively use it as a sword to destroy the plaintiff’s right to review.
*746This enigma is not dissipated by application of the rule that one who seeks to have a judgment set aside because of an erroneous ruling must show that prejudice resulted. The appellant is entitled to the benefit of the jury finding on damages until it is found to be erroneous. It has not been found erroneous. She cannot be deprived of the benefit of it on the basis that, while not erroneous, she hasn’t convinced the court that it was correct.
Nor is the problem solved by the fact that the District Judge disregarded answer 2 in entering judgment for the defendant. So far as we know he disregarded it because answer 1 excluded death proximately resulting from unseaworthiness. But it is possible that answer 1 was induced by erroneous rulings and instructions on unseaworthiness, and the answer might be different when correctly submitted.
In an appeal the appellate court may conclude that the wrong standard of damages was employed at trial, and it may, by examining the record under the correct standard, conclude as a matter of law that plaintiff suffered no recoverable damages. But this is wholly different from saying, as my brother judges do, that a plaintiff with a jury finding in her favor has the burden of convincing the court that the standard under which it was rendered, although not found to be erroneous, is a correct standard, and, having judicially created such a burden, deny review of trial errors on the ground plaintiff has failed to meet it. The error in placing such a burden on a plaintiff is especially apparent in this instance where plaintiff is faulted for having failed to convince this court that what the jury did was done under a “correct” standard, which at this juncture is unknown, not articulated in any prior case or in this case either.
In its present posture, this case is a poor vehicle with which to begin at the appellate level the case by case promulgation of a standard of damages for a new cause of action, as directed in Moragne. But I do not understand why this should cause the plaintiff to be denied appellate review of other issues. We should review the instructions and rulings on unseaworthiness, and if there was error the case should be remanded for retrial on the issue of wrongful death resulting from unseaworthiness. The promulgation of a correct measure of damages for that cause of action has to commence in some courtroom somewhere. It may as well begin in the District Court in this case.