Court Opinion

ID: 9852112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:24:40.215429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:22.706144
License: Public Domain

Foth, J.,
dissenting:
I cannot agree that this plaintiff should have a second chance to recover substantial damages simply because the jury failed to award her a little something for two bruises on her leg.
Plaintiff, a passenger, was the innocent victim of a rear end collision. Her evidence, taken at face value, disclosed two separate and distinct injuries. The first was a bruised leg, caused by being thrown against an air conditioner in the car. The second was a whiplash injury to the neck and spine. This latter injury was the claimed cause of low back and leg pain, headaches, dizziness and nausea, eventually requiring a spinal fusion and partial laminectomy and resulting in permanent disability.
The majority is satisfied, as am I, that the jury was justified in finding that plaintiff’s serious and permanent ailments were pre-existing and were not aggravated by the collision. This conclusion, to my mind, should end the lawsuit. The concern over the bruises strikes me as an afterthought which should not revive a lawsuit which has been resolved by a jury. Plaintiff sued for $87,000 actual damages, alleging that she had suffered “severe and permanent physical excruciating pain and discomfort.” No bruises or contusions are mentioned in the petition. She offered evidence of medical expenses totaling almost $8,500. Her evidence was all directed at showing the seriousness of her back and neck troubles, and that they were the result of the accident. *262Defendants efforts went to show that plaintiff’s back and neck had bothered her for years before the accident, and that her condition was the product of the natural aging process. The bruised leg was mentioned in the testimony, but only in passing. It is clear from the record that the real issue tried and submitted to the jury was the claim of whiplash.
The issues of negligence and proximate cause were resolved by the instruction quoted in the court’s opinion, where it is characterized as being “at best . . . confusing to the jury.” In the first sentence the jury was told that defendant’s negligence caused plaintiff “injury and damage.” In the second it was told that it was to determine “the amount of damages, if any,” plaintiff should recover. Defendant, not plaintiff, objected to the first sentence as ignoring evidence that there was no injury at all. Neither party objected to the second sentence, nor is there any claim on appeal that it is erroneous. It therefore represents the law of the case, and is binding on appeal. Kitchen v. Lasley Co., 186 Kan. 24, 28, 348 P. 2d 588; King v. Consolidated Products Co., 159 Kan. 608, 157 P. 2d 541.
In King the evidence showed that one party had to be at fault and the other entitled to recover; the issue was which side of the road the two vehicles had collided on. The trial court, however, instructed on contributory negligence, an issue which had been neither pleaded nor proved. The jury returned a verdict of no damages for either party. On appeal the judgment was affirmed. It was noted that the contributory negligence instruction had not been objected to and was not assigned as error, and therefore became the law of the case. The court aptly observed that “the jury was informed it was possible for it to render the precise verdict it did render.” (159 Kan. at 610.)
Here, as the majority points out, the trial court modified PIK Civil 6.05 by inserting in the second sentence the words “if any.” The clear import, it seems to me, is that damages were not required, and that it was proper for the jury here to “render the precise verdict it did render.” Certainly a reasonable juror could not read “damages, if any,” to mean “at least some damages.” If, as plaintiff claims and the court now holds, the evidence was such as to require an award of damages in at least some amount, the jury should have been so instructed; under the instruction given the jury cannot be faulted for its verdict. It seems to me that *263the time for plaintiff to object was when the trial court proposed the instruction authorizing a zero verdict, and not after a verdict was returned in accordance with the instruction.
The reason no objection was made, no doubt, was because the attention of the parties, the court, and the jury, was focused on the validity of plaintiff’s claim for serious injuries and substantial damages. That was the hotly contested issue, and a zero verdict on that claim was always a distinct possibility. The instruction was simply tailored to cover the real issue being tried. In my view plaintiff should be bound by the law of the case and a result wholly consistent with it.
But even assuming plaintiff is not bound by the results of the unobjected-to instruction, I do not find the evidence so compelling of an award for the bruises as to require a new trial — a result the majority recognizes “may seem unfair.” Even if the bruises had been a serious issue at trial, I cannot believe the law requires compensation for every unjustified bump and bruise, no matter how trivial.
The common law has long incorporated the doctrine of “de minimis non curat lex” — the law does not concern itself about trifles. Kansas, so far as my limited research reveals, has only employed the Latin once, and then by way of quotation. (Westbrook v. Nelson, 64 Kan. 436, 439, 67 Pac. 884.) The principle, however, is familiar to every Kansas lawyer and is applied in Kansas courts on a regular basis. See, e.g., Doner v. Deal, 104 Kan. 793, 180 Pac. 766; Garvin v. Davison, 101 Kan. 508,168 Pac. 318. An offshoot of the doctrine is the widely accepted rule that an appellate court will not reverse a defendant’s judgment merely because the plaintiff was entitled to nominal damages. See Craig v. St. Louis-S. F. Rly. Co., 120 Kan. 427, 243 Pac. 1050, and cases cited therein.
Elsewhere the doctrine has been applied to situations conceptually indistinguishable from the case at bar. Bryant v. Parr, 86 So. 2d 115 (La. App. 1956) was a rear end collision case. It was found that plaintiff was negligent and the defendant, Mary Lou Parr, was entitled to recover for the damage to her car. In addition she claimed compensation for bruises which raised a “huge bump” on her knee and caused her to need assistance to limp to a drugstore where medication was applied. The court disallowed damages for the injury saying:
*264“The testimony concerning the injuries of Miss Parr does not convince us that they were sufficiently serious to justify an award. She did not go to a doctor. She merely went to a druggist who put some medicine on it and that seems to have been the end of her suffering. De minimis non curat lex.” (86 So. 2d at 119.)
The same result was reached in Curry v. Fendt, 94 So. 2d 164 (La. App. 1957), and in Nicolle v. Roberts, 117 So. 2d 622 (La. App. 1960). Both were bruise cases where liability was clear; in both recovery was denied under the de minimis maxim.
Sonnier v. United States Casualty Company, 157 So. 2d 911 (La. App. 1963) was the last of this series of Louisiana cases. There the plaintiff-passenger was denied any recovery for “a mere bump or shaking up resulting from a minor accident caused by a tortfeasor.” (Id. at 913.) Once again the rule of de minimis was applied. On appeal the Louisiana Supreme Court disapproved this reasoning because de minimis is a common law concept, while Louisiana is a civil law jurisdiction. Sonnier v. United States Casualty Company, 246 La. 401, 165 So. 2d 3 (1964). (The decree of the Court of Appeals in Sonnier was nevertheless affirmed on a finding that plaintiff had established neither the serious injuries for which she primarily sought recovery nor any other injury.) Kansas, of course, is a common law jurisdiction, and the doctrine flourishes here.
A case very close to the one at bar is McUne v. Fuqua, 45 Wash. 2d 650, 277 P. 2d 324 (1954). There liability for the collision had been established at a first trial, and a new trial had been held on the issue of damages only. Plaintiff’s primary claim was for neck and back injuries, shock, and emotional upset. He also suffered a laceration to the head which had required five stitches to close. At the second trial the jury returned a defendant’s verdict, and the trial court ordered yet a third trial, in large part because of the failure to compensate plaintiff for the undenied head injury and ensuing medical treatment. The Washington Supreme Court reversed, saying the new trial order was an abuse of discretion. It found first that it was a jury question whether the back and neck injuries primarily claimed were pre-existing or the result of the accident. It went on to say:
“There is no dispute that Mr. McUne suffered a head injury or laceration requiring five sutures, but the evidence is in conflict as to the seriousness of this injury — in fact, as to whether it was inconsequential or not; and the jury apparently concluded, as they had a right to do, that the alleged head injury was *265inconsequential. Under the circumstances, an award of nominal damages was not mandatory respecting the head injury.” (Id. at 653.)
Another nearly identical case is Hayes v. Hayes, 357 S. W. 2d 863 (Ky. 1962). There the plaintiff passenger sued her husband-driver and the driver of a taxicab involved in the collision. The jury found her driver was solely responsible for the accident, but returned a zero verdict under an instruction containing the “if any” language. It was undenied that plaintiff had cut her hand slightly and had sprained her ankle. Beyond that, she claimed neck, shoulder and rib bruises, headaches, and nervousness, all developing later. Her doctor and hospital bills amounted to $712.20. The court concluded that causation of her serious injuries was a jury question. As to the cut and sprain the court observed:
“There is no contradiction in the evidence, either positive or inferable, that the plaintiff did suffer some superficial injury in the accident as the result, as the jury found, of the negligence of her husband, the defendant. The jury should have awarded nominal damages. However, we do not reverse a judgment on a failure of the jury to do so.” (Id. at 866.)
Putting these cases against those cited by the majority, it seems to me the best that can be said is that there is a split of authority on whether a jury is required to award money damages for admitted injuries they deem inconsequential. For my part I prefer to leave it to the jury.
The majority does place some emphasis on one visit to her doctor and plaintiff’s receipt of X-rays and medication, which it says were undoubtedly the result of the accident. However, the jury found, and the majority accepts, that the back and neck injuries were not due to. the accident. We are therefore only concerned with the bruises when we are looking at medical treatment which might be chargeable to the defendant.
There is no evidence, the majority does not suggest, and if we are to speculate it seems highly improbable, that the medication or X-rays were in any way related to the bruises. They were for her sore back and neck, a condition which has been found to be unrelated to the accident. Once again, I cannot see why the jury was required to see that she was reimbursed for those expenses.
In summary, my position is: Plaintiff had a full opportunity to prove her primary claim of severe and permanent injury and she failed. As to her superficial injuries, the jury was told without *266objection that they did not have to compensate her for them if, in its wisdom, it found them to be noncompensable. She should be bound by the verdict rendered accordingly. And finally, even if a small sum should have been awarded (and the jury should have been so instructed), under the doctrine of de minimis non curat lex the case should not be reversed for a new trial at which plaintiff will have a second chance, before a second jury, to relitigate not only the trivial injuries but the cause of her serious ailments. I would affirm.