Court Opinion

ID: 9585297
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:58:48.239559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:38:07.205493
License: Public Domain

SACKETT, Judge
(specially concurring).
I concur with the majority’s opinion.
I find further support in the recent case of Schermer v. Muller, 380 N.W.2d 684 (Iowa 1986) for the majority’s determination there is sufficient direct and circumstantial evidence to sustain the jury verdict. In Schermer, the court determined a negligence issue of defendant’s failure to yield one-half the traveled way was not merely an ingenious theory of plaintiff’s counsel but fact-based theories of sufficient probative force to support the plaintiff’s claim of causative negligence against defendant. Id.
There was no direct evidence defendant was on the wrong side of the road. Id. The evidence came from circumstantial evidence because there was little direct evidence of what happened in the last few seconds before the vehicles collided. Id.
I find here fact-based theories sufficient to support plaintiff’s claim.
I agree with the majority in reversing the order granting new trial. However, I have some question whether they have applied the proper standard of review in considering the trial court’s conditional order granting a new trial. In ruling on a motion for new trial, broad but not unlimited discretion is vested in the trial court. We are slower to interfere with the grant of that relief than with its denial. However, the discretion so accorded must have some support in the record. Hardy v. Britt-Tech Corp., 378 N.W.2d 307, 310 (Iowa App. 1985).
The trial court in essence determined because the jury award of compensatory damages was equal to the amount of the funeral and medical bills and the resulting verdicts were the result of misapprehension, passion, prejudice and a miscom-prehension of liability and nothing more.
In Hardy v. Britt-Tech Corp., 378 N.W.2d 307, 311 (Iowa App.1985), we held there was support for the trial court’s determination that a verdict was influenced by passion and prejudice where a jury awarded a decedent’s estate an amount only $2,644.74 in excess of funeral and medical expenses and determined the present worth of the support he would provide his family to be $1,725,000. However, Hardy is distinguishable. In Hardy we were comparing apples with apples (compensatory damages with compensatory damages), and because both measures of damages flowed from the same issue (the loss because of decedent’s death), it was *674fair to consider them together in considering the reasonableness of each.
In this case we have compensatory damages awarded in response to the following instruction:
No. 20
The measure of damages for Kevin Thacker’s death includes each of the following items, so far as shown by the evidence:
1. Present worth or value of the estate which Kevin Thacker would reasonably be expected to have saved and accumulated as a result of his own efforts from the date of his death if he had lived out the term of his natural life. This is not the sum which, when placed at interest, would yield an amount equal to the income of the decedent at the time of his death, but as heretofore stated, is that amount which estimated at its present worth under all the circumstances, as disclosed by the evidence, would have come to his estate from the date of his death to the end of his natural life.
• In estimating such damages, if any, you may and should consider the evidence on the expectancy of life of Kevin Thacker, his health and physical condition, his age and occupation at the time of his death, his education, his ability to earn money, the amount of taxes, both state and federal, which would be payable out of his earnings, his habits as to industry, thrift and economy, the contingencies of life, such as ill health, unemployment, increase or diminution of earning capacity as age advance, and all other facts and circumstances in the evidence tending to show the amount, if any, that his estate might have accumulated if he had not met death in the incident involved in this case, (emphasis supplied).
2. The fair and reasonable value of medical and ambulance expenses incurred as a result of the accident, but not to exceed $11,310.43, as shown by the evidence.
3. An award of interest on the reasonable funeral expenses of decedent for such time as they were prematurely incurred.
The jury was instructed as follows on punitive damages:
No. 25
The plaintiff in the Petition has asked to recover over and above his actual damages what is known in law as exemplary damages. You are instructed that the law of this State permits but does not require a jury to allow exemplary damages in certain cases if it is found by the jury that the act of the defendant is the result of actual malice or recklessness. By recklessness, as this term is used in this case, is meant something more than negligence, but is meant that an act is done in such a manner and under such circumstances as to show heedlessness and an utter disregard and abandon as to what result may flow from the doing of an act or from the manner in which it is done.
By actual malice as the term is used in this case is that which is established by proof of spite, hatred, ill-will, or an evil, wicked or unlawful purpose or by proof of a deliberate or fixed intent to do injury-
Exemplary damages are not compensatory in the ordinary sense, but are allowed by way of punishment to restrain the defendant and others from the commission of like acts in the future.
So in this case if you find from the evidence that the defendant Kendall El-dred without justification struck Kevin Thacker in the head, and that such conduct was a result of actual malice or recklessness as those terms are defined herein, you may allow to the plaintiff exemplary damages in addition to his actual damages as explained to you in the preceding paragraph.
In determining the amount of exemplary damages, if any, to be awarded the plaintiff, the Court can give you no exact rule, but you should be guided by your careful and well considered judgment and allow, if any, such an amount such only as you shall find the plaintiff enti-*675tied to receive in addition to his actual damages under all the facts and circumstances as shown by the evidence and under these instructions.
In no event may you allow the plaintiff as exemplary damages more than $2,000,000.00, being the amount asked for in his Petition, nor may you allow any exemplary damages unless you find by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant’s conduct was a result of actual malice or recklessness, as those terms are herein defined.
The punitive damages are not to compensate; they are, as the majority states, to punish. The jury could well have determined decedent would not have accumulated anything during his lifetime and still elected to punish defendant for his action. I, like the majority, find no basis for the trial court’s ruling and would find the trial court abused its discretion in ordering a new trial.