Court Opinion

ID: 9735651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:26:55.073487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:00.689603
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I dissent from the Majority’s decision to reduce the verdict from $8,422 to $6,422.
My judicial spectacles are not equipped with such microscopic and diagnostic lenses as will show me that $8,000 is so grossly excessive as to shock my conscience and that $6,000 is, by every rule of law, medicine and logic, just right. The plaintiff suffered a serious injury to his right knee cap. He will have a 15% limitation in the use of that knee for the rest of his life. (Being 24 years of age he has a life expectancy, according to Standard Mortality Tables, of 43 years). Dr. F. S. Mainzer testified that if the plaintiff attempts to run or jump “his knee may give out.” The plaintiff testified that his knee “feels like you have a real bad headache in your knee. You get a thumping.” Climbing steps, as he must in his work, he experiences considerable discomfort and pain.
The Majority enumerates the items of expense to which the plaintiff was subjected as the result of the defendant’s negligence, but this expenditure is not the most reliable touchstone for determining a just and adequate verdict. The plaintiff testified that at the time of the trial he had not received all his doctor bills. But even so, the total medical expense does not constitute the infallible test for ascertaining the extent of a disabled person’s future losses. A man with a leg amputation may have a comparatively small medical expense and if he has a sedentary occupation he may earn as much, and even more than he did prior to the accident. *148Bnt who would say that with a leg gone, one has not suffered a major physical catastrophe and is not entitled to an award of damages in no way dependent upon the actual amount of medical expense? A man with an amputated limb or with a disabled knee joint will be one of the very first to be released from remunerative work in an economic slump and he will be the last to be reemployed when the wheels of prosperity begin to turn again.
This Court has said with the monotony of a broken phonograph record that “the question of the amount of the verdict will be reviewed only in cases where so grossly excessive as to shock our sense of justice.” In these days of ever-rocketing living costs, the margin between $8,000 and $6,000 (where a serious injury is involved) is not such a sum as shocks my sense of justice. The swing of a knee hinge cannot be measured with such precise monetary calipers that one can say with mathematical certitude where the free arc ends which makes $8,000 shockable and $6,000 just right. It is for that reason that I would leave the verdict where the jury put it, and where the lower court refused to molest it.