Court Opinion

ID: 9652440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:23:43.236012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:51.388179
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I must respectfully dissent to part IV of the court’s opinion. In this case the trial court, after a hearing, denied the Medical Center’s motion for a new trial based on the ground that the damages awarded by *310the jury were excessive.1
When the trial court is presented with a motion for a new trial, it must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the conclusion that the jury’s finding was correct. Chenell v. Westbrook College, 324 A.2d 735, 737 (Me.1974). The trial court cannot substitute its judgment as to the credibility of witnesses for the judgment of the jury. Id. The assessment of damages is the sole province of the jury, and the amount fixed must stand unless it is apparent the jury acted under some bias, prejudice or improper influence, or made some mistake of law or fact. Poulette v. Herbert C. Haynes, Inc., 347 A.2d 596, 599 (Me.1975).
It is well established that this court’s scope of review of a trial court’s disposition of a motion for a new trial is very limited when the motion is based on the excessiveness or inadequacy of damages awarded by a jury.2 We have repeatedly stated that:
In deciding the correctness of the action taken by the presiding Justice we cannot substitute our judgment for his. His order may be reversed by us only ‘in the event that a clear and manifest abuse of discretion on the part of the trial judge is shown.’
Chenell v. Westbrook College, 324 A.2d 735, 737 (Me.1974)3 (quoting MacLean v. Jack, 160 Me. 93, 99, 198 A.2d 1, 4 (1964)). See also Binette v. Deane, 391 A.2d 811, 813 (Me.1978); Poulette v. Herbert C. Haynes, Inc., 347 A.2d 596, 599, 600 (Me.1975); Marr v. Shores, 495 A.2d 1202, 1206 (Me.1985); Werner v. Lane, 393 A.2d 1329, 1332 (Me.1978). Moreover, “[wjhen the determination of any question rests in the judicial discretion of the trial court, the exercise of that discretion can not [sic] be reviewed by an appellate court unless it is made to appear that the decision was clearly wrong or that it was based upon some error in law.” Young v. Carignan, 152 Me. 332, 337, 129 A.2d 216, 218 (1957) (quoting Rioux v. Portland Water District, 132 Me. 307, 309, 170 A. 63, 64 (1934)).
The reasoning for our limited review was concisely set forth by this court in Mandarelli v. McGovern, 393 A.2d 533, 535 (Me.1978) (quoted with approval in Marr v. Shores, 495 A.2d at 1206).
[The trial court] before whom an action has been tried is in a far better position than an appellate court to know whether in light of [its] observations at the trial the damages awarded by the jury were so wholly inconsistent with the proof as to reflect some bias, prejudice or improper influence on the part of the jury or to support the conclusion that the verdict was the result of some mistake of fact or law on their part.
Clearly the burden is on the Medical Center to show that the record reveals that the trial court’s ruling denying the Medical Center’s motion for a new trial was a clear and manifest abuse of the court’s discretion. The Medical Center has failed to meet this burden. It rests its claim that the trial court committed error on the bald assertion that the damages assessed by the jury are excessive. The Medical Center points to nothing in the record that would support a claim that the trial court clearly should have found the damages so wholly inconsistent with the proof as to reflect that the jury acted improperly, nor does it claim any error of law in the trial court’s decision.
The Medical Center did not before the trial court and has not before this court challenged the special verdict form or the instructions given by the trial court to the jury. The first two questions of the special verdict addressed the issues of negligence and proximate cause. The third question addressed damages and was broken into *311six subparts of (a) through (f). The sixth subpart, (f), dealt with damages for Mr. Gardner’s conscious pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life. The trial court carefully instructed the jury as to each of the subparts. As to subpart (f), the trial court instructed the jury:
Conscious pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, in that item we are talking about the pain and suffering suffered by Mr. Gardner during the period of time that he lived from the date of in [sic] the injury until the date of — until the date of his death. Now, included in pain and suffering there’s both mental and physical suffering. Physical — physical suffering, of course, is something that we are all somewhat familiar with, we have all had to endure pain to some degree and know something about what it is. Mental suffering is something that is more difficult to define. It’s the — it’s the mental anguish, that results from having suffered the physical injuries and the inability to carry — the loss of enjoyment of life, the inability of one to carry on one’s life in the same fashion that it would have been carried on had the injury not occurred. The inability to do those things that one otherwise would be able to do; and, again, those are all matters within your discretion. The — the law sets no magic formula for — for these matters. It’s the function of the Jury to consider all of the evidence and to make a decision based upon that evidence and by evaluating that evidence in — in the light of your collective wisdom and judgment and experience, (emphasis added).
Contrary to the court’s assertion, nothing in this record suggests, nor does the Medical Center contend, that the jury misunderstood or was confused by either the special verdict form or the trial court’s proper instruction as to the time span to be considered by the jury. In Michaud v. Steckino, 390 A.2d 524, 536 (Me.1978), we clearly stated the standard of our review of instructions on damages.
This court must presume that the jury followed the trial court’s instruction respecting the several elements of damage to which the plaintiff was entitled, once they had decided on the question of liability, and that they did not base any part of their dollar verdict on matters not mentioned in the evidence nor in the charge. It must be presumed that the jurors were influenced in their verdict only by the law as given them by the trial justice and the legal evidence presented to them during the course of the trial, and that no significant extraneous matter infiltrated their decisionmak-ing. [citations omitted] Any other rule would assume misconduct on the part of the jury, an assumption in which we are not justified to indulge, (emphasis in original).
See also State v. Franzen, 461 A.2d 1068, 1073 (Me.1983) (“We cannot presume that the jury was too ignorant to comprehend the law given to them in this case and to apply the same to the facts which it was within their province to find.”) “It is not for the reviewing court to interfere merely because the award is large, or because the court would have awarded less.” Wallace v. Coca-Cola Bottling Plants, Inc., 269 A.2d 117, 122 (Me.1970) (quoting Boston v. Thombs, 127 Me. 278, 281, 143 A. 63, 64 (1928)).
For the period of the 74 days that Mr. Gardner survived the injury imposed on him by the negligence of the Medical Center, the record is replete with the pain and suffering he endured and his inability to carry on his life in the same fashion that it would have been carried on had the injury not occurred.
The trial court properly exercised its discretion in determining both that the jury’s assessment of damages was supported by credible evidence and that the jury had not acted under some bias, prejudice or undue influence or reached its verdict under some mistake of law or in disregard of evidentiary facts. Binette v. Deane, 391 A.2d at 815. Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the Superior Court.

. Eastern Maine Medical Center did not provide this court with a transcript of that hearing.

. With the adoption of the Rules of Civil Procedure on December 1, 1959, the former optional choice of presenting a motion for new trial directly to the Law Court was abolished. Accordingly, the decisions of this court between 1928 and 1956 cited by Eastern Maine Medical Center in its brief are of scant assistance.

. It should be noted that in Chenell v. Westbrook College, we held that the defendant had not demonstrated on the record that the trial court had manifestly abused its discretion in granting the plaintiffs' motion for a new trial.