Abbott v. Taz Express

Opinion

CROSBY, J. This appeal is brought by a personal injury plaintiff who contends a jury award for economic damages ($17,300) is inadequate as a matter of law because her vocational rehabilitation expert testified it would cost more than $115,000 to retrain her for less strenuous employment. In a takeoff on “baseball arbitration,” plaintiff claims the jury was obliged to either accept or reject this expert testimony on a take-it-or-leave-it basis because there was no competing expert to offer different numbers.

Plaintiff suggests the following rule of law: “[Wjhen an expert witness testifies to specific dollar amounts, and not to a range of dollar amounts, for particular types of economic damages, and the jury’s award is not consistent with any of those specific amounts, either alone or added together, the jury has arbitrarily and improperly disregarded that expert’s testimony [1Q . . . [The jury] could either accept or reject the expert’s figures; they could not substitute new figures, because there was no evidence from which new amounts could be drawn.”

There is no such rule. Plaintiff forgets that between black and white are various shades of gray, and all of the colors of the rainbow as well. What constitutes fair and reasonable compensation in a particular case is a question of fact, and no precise mathematical formula exists. We refuse to transform the jury’s inherently subjective task of calculating damages into a mechanical exercise of voting to accept or reject the testimony of any witness in toto. Substantial evidence sustains its discretionary determination of plaintiff’s damages.

I

Plaintiff Madelyn Abbott was employed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point as a purchasing director. She was injured in September 1994, when a [856]barrel being delivered by defendant Taz Express, a trucking company, toppled onto her right foot. She tried to catch it, but could not support the weight. She went to a clinic the next day, but there were no signs of trauma and she did not miss any work. She did not seek lost wages or medical expenses.

Plaintiff’s medical-legal experts determined she suffered from a debilitating neurological condition (reflex sympathetic dystrophy, also known as RSD) and that she would become disabled within three to five years. The defense challenged the severity of her injuries and the “highly questionable nature of [her] medical condition,” noting the dispute among the medical experts concerning the RSD diagnosis.