Jamie Wilson v. William Condon ( 2016 )

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2016 ME 187 Docket: Was-16-41
Argued: November 8, 2016
Decided: December 29, 2016
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
JAIME WILSON
v.
WILLIAM CONDON
GORMAN, J.
[¶1] Jaime Wilson appeals from a judgment entered in the Superior
Court (Washington County, Stokes, J.) in favor of Philip Barnard on his
complaint for negligence against William Condon but awarding no damages
on Wilson’s derivative claim for loss of consortium. Wilson contends that the
jury’s award of no damages for loss of consortium was manifestly inadequate
and internally inconsistent and that the court erred in denying her motion for
additur or a new trial on that basis. We affirm the judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
[¶2] We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury
verdict. See Marr v. Shores, 495 A.2d 1202, 1206 (Me. 1985). In 2007,
husband and wife Philip Barnard and Jaime Wilson moved into an apartment
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owned by William Condon. On June 15, 2007, a deck attached to the
apartment collapsed while Barnard was standing on it, causing him significant
injuries. In 2013, Barnard and Wilson filed a complaint against Condon in the
Superior Court alleging that Condon had been negligent and seeking damages
for Barnard’s medical expenses, lost earnings, permanent impairment, pain,
suffering, and emotional distress, and Wilson’s loss of consortium. Barnard
and Wilson divorced during the pendency of that lawsuit.
[¶3] In October of 2015, the court conducted a jury trial. Regarding the
loss of consortium claim, the verdict form asked the jury to answer the
compound question, “Was William Condon negligent, and was his negligence a
cause of injuries to Jaime Wilson?” (Question 3), with a “Yes” or a “No.” If the
jury answered Question 3 in the affirmative, the verdict form then asked the
jury to answer the question, “What are Jaime Wilson’s total damages?”
(Question 4).
[¶4] During deliberation, the jury sent the following note to the court:
“Your honor, we believe [William] Condon was negligent and Mr. Barnard
deserves damages that were the result of Mr. Condon’s negligence. But we do
not believe Jaime Wilson is entitled to damages, in spite of Mr. Condon’s
negligence. How do we answer questions # 3 and # 4 in light of our
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judgments of the evidence?” In response to the jury’s question, and with the
agreement of the parties, the court directed the jurors to “focus on question
three.” In the verdict it announced later that day, the jury awarded $610,000
to Barnard and answered Question 3 in the affirmative, but entered “0” when
asked what were Wilson’s total damages in Question 4. The court denied
Wilson’s subsequent motion for additur or a new trial in which she argued
that the verdict was manifestly inadequate and internally inconsistent. See
M.R. Civ. P. 59(a). Wilson appealed.
II. DISCUSSION
[¶5] Wilson contends that the court erred in denying her motion for
additur or a new trial, arguing, as she did in the Superior Court, that the jury’s
verdict was manifestly inadequate and internally inconsistent in that the jury
rationally could not have found that Condon had injured her while awarding
no damages. In support of her argument, she points to essentially
uncontroverted testimonial evidence about the adverse effects of Barnard’s
injuries on their marriage and to the jury’s responses to Questions 3 and 4 of
the verdict form.
[¶6] We review a ruling on a motion for additur or new trial for an
abuse of discretion, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
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verdict and deferring to the jury on issues of credibility. Marr, 495 A.2d at
1206-07; accord Ma v. Bryan, 2010 ME 55, ¶¶ 2, 4, 8, 997 A.2d 755 (“We
accord significant deference to jury verdicts because the jury is best situated
to evaluate the credibility and demeanor of witnesses.”); see Guilford Yacht
Club Ass’n, Inc. v. Ne. Dredging, Inc., 438 A.2d 478, 481 (Me. 1981) (“[A]ll
rational intendments are to be taken in support of the jury verdict.”
(quotation marks omitted)). An award of damages is “the sole province of the
jury,” Binette v. Deane, 391 A.2d 811, 815 (Me. 1978) (quotation marks
omitted), and “will not be overturned unless it is without rational
explanation,” Walter v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2000 ME 63, ¶ 35, 748 A.2d 961 (quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, an appellant who argues that a court
abused its discretion in denying a motion for additur or a new trial due to
inadequate damages bears the significant burden of showing that “the award
is without rational explanation and, hence, is to be deemed a disregard by the
jury of the evidence or the result of passion, bias, prejudice, accident, mistake
[of fact or law] or improper compromise.” Binette, 391 A.2d at 815 (quotation
marks omitted); accord Chenell v. Westbrook Coll., 324 A.2d 735, 737
(Me. 1974).
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[¶7] Wilson has failed to meet her burden of demonstrating any of the
available grounds for overturning a jury’s verdict pursuant to M.R. Civ. P.
59(a). In alleging that the jury had no rational basis for its verdict, Wilson
points to little else aside from the fact that the jury did not find in her favor
when it refused to award her damages. See Ma, 2010 ME 55, ¶ 10,
997 A.2d 755; see also Nyzio v. Vaillancourt, 382 A.2d 856, 862 (Me. 1978)
(explaining that the amount of damages awarded was insufficient, by itself, to
show that the jury acted improperly). Verdicts in which a jury finds a
defendant liable but awards low or no damages to the plaintiff are not
inherently irrational or improper and do not necessarily warrant additur or a
new trial pursuant to M.R. Civ. P. 59(a). See Reardon v. Larkin, 2010 ME 86,
¶¶ 16-17, 3 A.3d 376; Pelletier v. Fort Kent Golf Club, 662 A.2d 220, 224-25
(Me. 1995); Westlake v. Morton, 655 A.2d 334, 336 (Me. 1995); Stubbs v.
Bartlett, 478 A.2d 690, 691-93 (Me. 1984); McLellan v. Morrison, 434 A.2d 28,
30-31 (Me. 1981).
[¶8] There is absolutely no evidence that the jury verdict was “the
result of passion, bias, prejudice, accident, mistake or improper compromise,”
Binette, 391 A.2d at 815, and we decline to accept Wilson’s assertion that,
because the evidence regarding the adverse effects of Condon’s negligence on
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Wilson’s marriage was essentially uncontroverted, the verdict was the prima
facie result of prejudice, bias, passion, or mistake of law or fact. The jury was
free to disbelieve any testimony presented to it, even if that testimony was
uncontroverted. Ma, 2010 ME 55, ¶ 6, 997 A.2d 755. In this instance, the jury
could have rationally found that the testimonial evidence in favor of damages
for Wilson was “simply not credible.” Westlake, 655 A.2d at 336; accord
Reardon, 2010 ME 86, ¶ 16, 3 A.3d 376; Cope v. Sevigny, 289 A.2d 682, 685
(Me. 1972); Avery v. Brown, 288 A.2d 713, 715 (Me. 1972) (“The degree of
credibility to which witnesses are entitled is for the jury and not the court to
decide.”).
[¶9] Wilson also contends, based on Questions 3 and 4 of the verdict
form,1 that the jury “could not and did not” conclude that Wilson suffered no
loss of consortium and that the jury’s verdict was internally inconsistent.
Although the construction of the verdict form was ill-conceived,2 Wilson
cannot rely on the uncertainty created by Question 3 to show that the verdict
was irrational or improper. This is not a case in which “[w]e do not know, and
1 To the extent that her contentions regarding the inadequacy of the jury verdict may in fact be a
challenge to the use of the verdict form at trial, Wilson has not preserved that issue for appeal.
See Stubbs v. Bartlett, 478 A.2d 690, 693 (Me. 1984).
2 As counsel for Condon acknowledged at oral argument, when it became evident at trial that the
jury was struggling with the verdict form, the court and counsel for the parties could have and
should have modified the verdict form to clarify the jury’s decisions.
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we will never know” the intentions behind the jury’s verdict. Ma, 2010 ME 55,
¶ 11, 997 A.2d 755. To the contrary, the jury made it abundantly clear in its
note to the court that it had considered the evidence and had concluded that
Wilson was not entitled to damages.
[¶10] We take this opportunity to emphasize that the “trial court has
broad authority in drafting special verdict forms,” Hansen v. Sunday River
Skiway Corp., 1999 ME 45, ¶ 13, 726 A.2d 220, and should exercise this
authority when an ill-stated question to a jury may create—or has created—
confusion. We affirmatively disavow our dicta in one case, Shaw v. Bolduc,
658 A.2d 229, 231 (Me. 1995), where we noted that a verdict form that
separated the questions of negligence and proximate cause for each defendant
represented “a practice that is neither necessary nor desirable.” Separation of
the questions of negligence and causation on verdict forms is not only
permissible but, in many instances, may be necessary to avoid jury confusion
and allow a more accurate and reviewable report of the jury’s verdict.
[¶11] Here, the jury’s question to the court could be read to suggest
that the jury may have determined that causation as to Wilson was not
proved. The compound question prevented the jury from reporting that
determination, so instead it reported its ultimate result in answering the
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damages question regarding Wilson—a question the jury would not have
reached if it found causation was not proved. In this case, a better approach to
the verdict form might have been to ask a single negligence question, as only
one act of negligence was at issue. Then the jury could have been asked
separate causation questions for Barnard and for Wilson, with direction to
proceed to the damages question for each plaintiff only if the jury found
causation proved as to that individual. This approach would have added only
one question to the verdict form, but would have greatly improved the
accuracy of the jury’s report of its verdict.
[¶12] Because Wilson has failed to carry her burden on appeal of
showing any compelling reason—namely prejudice, bias, passion, mistake of
fact or law, or improper compromise—for changing a jury’s verdict, we
conclude that the court did not abuse its discretion in denying her motion
pursuant to M.R. Civ. P. 59(a) and affirm the judgment.
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
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Barry K. Mills, Esq. (orally), Hale & Hamlin, LLC, Ellsworth, for
appellant Jaime Wilson
David C. King, Esq. (orally), and Jonathan P. Hunter, Esq., Rudman
Winchell, Bangor, for appellee William Condon
Washington County Superior Court docket number CV-2013-14
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY