Court Opinion

ID: 9477134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:15:11.566868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:42.962783
License: Public Domain

KEARSE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With due respect, I dissent from the majority’s decision to vacate the jury verdict *569and remand for a new trial. While I do not disagree that a verdict of $400,000 for pain and suffering for a back injury of the type shown here would be out of line with awards for this type of injury in other cases, the majority’s view that $400,000 of the $765,000 verdict was for pain and suffering rests on assumptions that cannot be verified, while other assumptions justifying the verdict are permissible.
The majority’s $400,000 figure is based on the assumptions that the jury calculated plaintiff Richard Nairn’s lost future earnings by projecting his earnings from defendant National Railroad Passenger Corporation (“Railroad”), less his earnings from his new employment, over a period of 26.5 years, and that in calculating the present worth of those lost future earnings it used a discount figure of 2%:
If the jury accepted Naim’s estimate of his current income, adopted the work-life expectancy of 26.5 years, and followed the judge’s instructions regarding the discount rate, then it is likely to have awarded no more than $350,000 for past and future lost earnings. This would leave at least $400,000 of the award for pain and suffering.
Majority Opinion ante at 567. This hypothesis does not take into account either the flexibility that the trial court’s instructions allowed the jury or evidence favorable to Nairn that may well have influenced the jury to award considerably more than $350,000 for economic loss.
For example, the trial court did not instruct the jurors that they must proceed on the assumption that Naim would have worked only 26.5 years longer, i.e., till age 61.5; it gave them that figure as a statistical average and told them “you may rely” on the actuarial statistics, stating that the statistical average “is only one element for you to consider. You may also consider and should consider ... any other evidence which you heard which in your, judgment reasonably indicates his probable length of life and his work life.” (Trial Transcript dated February 13, 1987 (“Tr.”), 99-100; emphasis added.) Given the evidence that before being injured Nairn had been in excellent physical condition, the jury could have, instead of woodenly accepting that Naim’s work life would be of average length, found that Nairn would work past the age of 61.5, thereby giving him more than 26.5 years of lost future earnings.
Nor did the court instruct the jurors that they must use 2% as their discount figure. Rather, it described the 2% figure as “a good guideline,” “a” way in which the jury could balance present discounted value with the effects of inflation (Tr. 102), stating “you may consider that the interest rate traditionally has been 2% higher than inflation,” and stating that “your experience, common sense and judgment shows you that inflation rates are indeed variable” (Tr. 103; emphasis added). Throughout the charge, the court advised the jury to use its common sense and judgment to estimate what amount would be required to make the plaintiff whole. Thus, consistent with the trial court’s instructions and with the law, see, e.g., Woodling v. Garrett Corp., 813 F.2d 543, 558-59 (2d Cir.1987) (upholding instruction that jury was to determine what rate was appropriate and stating that rates of 1.5% to 2% would not be inappropriate), the jury could easily have used a 1.5% discount factor, thereby increasing the award for future lost earnings to a significantly greater sum than that assumed by the majority.
Further, nothing in the trial court’s instructions or in the evidence required the jury to assume that, had Nairn remained uninjured and employed by the Railroad, he would have been moored at his most recent salary for the balance of his working life. Nairn, a 33-year-old at the time of his injury who had been employed by the Railroad since his mid-20’s, testified that he had intended to make the Railroad his career. He was a member of a labor union, he had received regular wage increases, and he had been promoted from carpenter to foreman after working for the Railroad for three years. The Railroad employee who had been Nairn’s supervisor testified that Nairn had been an excellent worker and one of his better foremen. The jury could easily have found on the basis of this evidence that Nairn would likely have received further wage increases had he not been injured and forced to leave the employ of the Railroad. See, e.g., Grunenthal v. Long Island Rail Road Co., 393 U.S. 156, 160, 89 S.Ct. 331, 334, 21 L.Ed.2d 309 (1968) (jury entitled to take into account evidence of past steady wage increases and the strong likelihood that similar increases would continue).
*570Thus, I note at least three variables as to which the majority has made assumptions that the jury was not required to adopt: retirement at age 61.5, a 2% discount rate, and a stagnant salary. Adopting reasonable differences in one or all of these variables — all consistent with the trial court’s instructions and with the evidence — yields economic-loss figures well in excess of the figure assumed by the majority, and, of course, a correspondingly lower figure for pain and suffering. For example, the jury may have used a 26.5-year work-life expectancy and a 2.0% discount rate (both as assumed by the majority) but found, based on the evidence and its common sense, that Nairn would have received salary increases had he remained with the Railroad. If the jury found he would have received only very modest increases of 2-3% per year, both in the Railroad job (with no promotions or large raises) and in his new (nonunionized) employment {see U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, Nov. 1987, at 66 (showing annual salary increases for transportation workers from 1979 through 1986 ranging from 2% to 9%, with an average for that period of 5-6%); see also U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1987, at 400 (showing annual salary increases for nonfarm business workers from 1980 through 1985 ranging from 4% to 10.5%, with an average for that period of 6-7%)), its award for lost earnings, past and future, could have been $479,000, rather than the $350,000 assumed by the majority.
Or, if the jury used a 2% discount rate but found that Nairn would have worked until age 65, receiving salary increases of 1-3%, its award for economic loss could have been $531,000.
Or, if the jury found that Nairn would have worked until age 65, receiving 1-3% salary increases, and if it used a 1.5% discount rate to calculate the present worth of those future earnings, its award for economic loss could have been $573,000.
Under any of these reasonable hypotheses, the jury’s award for economic loss would have been in the range of $479,000 to $573,000, and its award for pain and suffering thus would have been in the range of $286,000 to $192,000, sums within the permissible range according to the cases discussed by the majority.
We cannot know precisely, of course, how the jury arrived at its overall verdict of $765,000, for with respect to damages it was asked only the general question, “What amount do you find, without reduction for contributory negligence, will fairly and adequately compensate the plaintiff for all damages stemming from the incident of December 26, 1984?” Our obligation under the Seventh Amendment is to uphold the jury’s award if there is a reasonable basis on which to do so. See, e.g., Gorsalitz v. Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp., 429 F.2d 1033, 1047 (5th Cir.1970), appeal after remand, 456 F.2d 180, cert. denied, 407 U.S. 921, 92 S.Ct. 2463, 32 L.Ed.2d 807 (1972); cf. Atlantic & Gulf Stevedores, Inc. v. Ellerman Lines, Ltd., 369 U.S. 355, 364, 82 S.Ct. 780, 786, 7 L.Ed.2d 798 (1962) (“[A] search for one possible view of the case which will make the jury’s finding [unreasonable] results in a collision with the Seventh Amendment.”).
Given the various possibilities as to how the jury could reasonably have awarded as little as $192,000 for pain and suffering, I cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to set aside the verdict as excessive. I would affirm the judgment.