Court Opinion

ID: 9701319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:15:23.256058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:22.352497
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
by Mr. Justice Roberts:
In this action for libel, slander, unfair competition, and invasion of privacy, the jury returned very substantial verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs, Lillian Reis Corabi, and her children, Barbara and Michael. After granting defendant Curtis Publishing Company’s motions for judgments n.o.v. as to Mrs. Corabi’s unfair competition and invasion of privacy actions, the trial judge ruled that Curtis would be granted a new trial on the remaining actions unless the Corabis filed remittiturs accepting a reduction in their total recoveries from $1,250,000 to 1415,00o.1 The order read in part:
“Appropriate remittitur in compliance with these reductions of the verdicts shall be filed by the plaintiffs within thirty (30) days hereof and in the event of noncompliance, the defendant is granted a new trial.”
Within the thirty day period the Corabis filed an “Acceptance of Remittitur,” which stated in part:
“The undersigned hereby accept the following remittiturs required by the orders of the Court dated June 24, 1969, without prejudice to whatever rights plaintiffs might have to have the remittiturs reviewed on appeal.”
Following this recitation the document carefully and unconditionally stated that each of the verdicts was remitted, using language such as: “The verdict as to Count 2—the libel action involving Lillian Reis Corabi—is remitted to $100,000 compensatory damages and $200,000 punitive damages.”
*155When this “Acceptance of Remittitur” was sent to counsel for Curtis it was accompanied by a letter from the Corabis’ counsel, which read:
“Enclosed is your copy of an Acceptance of Remittiturs which we have this day filed with the Court.
“While we have attempted to phrase the Acceptance in a manner which will preserve any right which our clients might have to appeal the reductions in the verdicts, we have adopted this wording only as a cautionary measure.
“We have also reviewed the Orders in detail with Miss Reis and have been authorized to state that our clients are willing to compromise and settle this case in accordance with the Court’s Orders.”
On the basis of the above documents the majority finds that the Corabis’ acceptance was not “unqualified,” and that, suffering from this defect, it did not stay the effect of the trial Court’s grant of a new trial.2 I disagree.
It is my view that the language appended to the acceptance of the remittitur was, at most, surplusage, and should be discarded if found to be ineffective; thereby leaving the Corabis with at least their verdict in the remitted amount.
It is abundantly clear that the Corabis intended their remittiturs to be unconditional if it was determined that they had no further rights. They did not attempt to present their arguments and still preserve the option of either accepting or rejecting the remittitur. They' clearly indicated that they did not want to relinquish the verdict if their choice was limited to either accepting the remittitur or appealing the grant of a new trial. They did not hide their inten*156tions or deal deceitfully with either the trial court or with Curtis. All the Corabis wished to do was preserve “whatever rights” they might have had; they clearly said that if they had no further rights they wished to accept the remittitur.
How else could anyone obtain appellate review of whether a remittitur could be conditioned except by doing what the Corabis did? Clearly, if they had filed what the majority believes to be an unconditional remittitur they would have been foreclosed from any appeal on any issue. Gough v. Halperin, 306 Pa. 230, 159 Atl. 447 (1932); Clarkson v. Crawford, 285 Pa. 299, 132 Atl. 350 (1926). And if they had refused to accept the remittitur the question would have been mooted and they would have had to accept the much less desirable appellate posture of resisting the grant of a new trial in place of the more comfortable position of supporting the award of a verdict. Since the Corabis could not have obtained appellate review of this interesting question in any other way without seriously prejudicing their case, I would not hold that their attempt, novel though it may have been, caused them to lose even their reduced verdict.
A further consideration is that the Corabis’ action caused no harm to Curtis or any other party. Curtis’ rights would in no way be adversely affected if the language which sought to preserve, “whatever rights plaintiffs might have” was treated as surplusage and ignored. Further holding that the remittitur was effectively unconditional would put the case in the posture favored by the trial court. The trial court, after all, did not feel that, once the verdicts were reduced, Curtis deserved a new trial. The trial court affirmed the reduced verdict and held that it repre-. sented a fair adjudication of the controversy. Why should the majority now penalize the Corabis? For inventiveness? Because they tried something novel *157and sought to preserve “whatever rights” they had? Because they wished this Court to hear and decide an important issue involving substantial rights? I can find no rationale sufficient to support or explain the .majority’s willingness to deprive the Corabis of an already greatly reduced jury verdict, when there is available the more reasonable and more appropriate alternative of merely regarding the conditions as surplusage and treating the remittiturs as unconditional.
Finally, I must note that the legal proposition advanced by the Corabis is hardly devoid of merit. Rather, I believe it to be a valid issue arising from a difficult problem. There is no a priori strength in the argument that a litigant should not be allowed to ■simultaneously acquiesce in the reduction of an assertedly excessive verdict and appeal the reduction. Only the “tradition” of the remittitur procedure and the conceptual difficulties injected by the use of such terms as “offer” and “acceptance” render the notion of a conditional remittitur unacceptable. Taken as an original proposition there is much to be said for permitting the use of “conditional remittiturs.” After all, what is the judge really saying when he offers the too-successful litigant the option of accepting a remittitur? Is he not really saying that although the verdict as it stands is, in his opinion, too high, a lesser verdict would be appropriate? If this is what the trial judge is really saying, then allowing the use of “conditional remittiturs” would permit the case to be presented on appeal in an entirely accurate and very logical posture: the plaintiff would be arguing that he was entitled to at least the remitted verdict and probably more; the defendant would be arguing that the plaintiff should not have recovered anything, but •that the most he.was entitled to is the remitted verdict; ■and-the', trial court’s opinion of the proper outcome would be represented by the amount of the remitted *158verdict. Is not this a highly accurate and eminently fair way to handle the problem of an excessive verdict?3 I think it is; and I certainly would not dismiss it out of hand.
Since I believe that a parity who has remitted a portion of his verdict should be able to do so and still obtain appellate review as to the propriety of the remittitur, and since I can see neither justice nor reason in not at least permitting the CoraMs to keep their verdict in the remitted amount, I must dissent.

 The total jury verdict, including recoveries eliminated by the judgments n.o.v., was $1,825,000.

 I concur in the result reached by the majority insofar as they find that the asserted defect in the judgment upon which this appeal is based was waived by Curtis.

 The Corabis are not the first litigants to assert that a conditional remittitur is an entirely proper device, see, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 351 F. 2d 702 (5th Cir. 1965), aff’d, 388 U.S. 130, 87 S. Ct. 1975 (1967); and other courts have obviously felt that the traditional remittitur procedure lacked an appropriate symmetry, see Ralston v. Phila. R. T. Co., 267 Pa. 278, 110 Atl. 336 (1920).