Court Opinion

ID: 9571303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:30:37.840281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:17.305715
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ADAIR
specially concurring:
I concur in the result announced in the majority opinion.
The term “additur” is simply a modern name for “scaling a verdict upwards.”
In the early case of Osterholm v. Butte Electric Ry Co., et al., 60 Mont. 193 at p. 203, 199 P. 252 at p. 255, Mr. Chief Commissioner Poorman correctly wrote: “That a judgment may be reversed and a new trial ordered, where the damages awarded are clearly inadequate under the evidence, has been many times affirmed by this and other courts; but this court never has assumed to exercise the authority or power of ‘scaling a verdict upward’.”
I find no justification in the law for a trial judge to scale a jury’s verdict upward.