Sherwood v. Jackson

ATTERIDGE, J.,

pro

tem.

In this action to recover damages resultant from an assault and battery, the verdict of the jury was initially in favor of plaintiff and respondent as against defendant and appellant for $2,500' actual damages, together with an award of $1,000' punitive damages. Subsequently, on motion for a new trial and as a required condition precedent to the denial thereof, the trial court exacted of plaintiff a remission of $1,000 of the amount awarded as actual damages, as well as $495 of the sum assessed as punitive damages. Plaintiff having filed her consent thereto, judgment in her favor in the reduced amounts was duly entered, from which defendant prosecutes this appeal.

The main contention advanced by appellant is that the award for damages is so excessive in amount as to indicate that the jury in making its assessment thereof were animated by passion and prejudice. But the question as to whether or not any given verdict for damages is excessive in amount or arrived at through improper influences is always one for the primary consideration of the trial court which heard the cause or supervised the deliberations of the jury returning it. When that tribunal has fairly exercised its discretion in approving, disapproving or modifying a given award in the manner and in the light of the considerations enjoined upon it by law, an appellate court must of necessity accord the greatest deference to the deliberately formed judgment of the trial court. This is because of the obviously superior and unrestricted opportunity which the latter alone possesses of passing upon the weight and

[443]

effect of evidence, as well as of observing or determining just what influences, proper or otherwise, may have operated upon the collective minds of the jury. With these considerations in view our Supreme Court has repeatedly announced as a rule of law the precise evidentiary situation which must always exist and be presented by the record, before an appellate court is warranted in reversing a judgment upon the present ground thus urged by the appellant, as follows:

“Unless we (the reviewing court) are able to say that the award of damages made by. the jury and sustained by the trial court was so- grossly disproportionate to any compensation reasonably warranted by the facts as presented to us on appeal as to shock the sense of justice and raise at once a presumption that it was the result of passion, prejudice, or corruption, rather than an honest and sober judgment, this court may not exercise the power of revision.”