747 A.2d 1069 | Conn. Super. Ct. | 1998
This case was tried to a jury before the court, beginning on June 10, 1998 and concluding with the jury's verdict on July 17, 1998. The plaintiff alleged that he *286 had suffered serious injuries due to the negligence of Haist, the individual defendent, in the operation of a tractor trailer truck owned by Vermillion, the corporate defendent. The jury awarded economic damages in the amount of $1,144,489 and noneconomic damages in the amount of $137,500 and found the plaintiff to have been twenty-five percent negligent in causing the collision between the vehicle he was operating and the defendent's truck.
"The setting aside of a verdict can occur . . . for two general reasons. First, a trial court may set aside a verdict is manifestly unjust because the jury, on the basis of the evidence presented, mistakenly applied a legal principle or because there is no evidence to which the legal principles of the case can be applied . . . Second, a verdict may be set aside if its result justifies a suspension that a juror or jurors were influenced by prejudice, corruption or partiality. A trial court's review of a motion to set aside a verdict, therefore, will focus on one or both of the two tests." (Citation omitted.) Foley v. HuntingtonCo.,
The defendents, of course, have the burden of proof on their motion. "The burden is on the [defendent] to establish that, in the context of the proceedings as a whole, the . . . arguments were so prejudical that they deprived him of a fair trial."Nevers v. Van Zuilen,
A preliminary issue which applies to both of the defendents' remaining claims is the effect of their failure to move for a mistrial in response to the allegedly improper arguments of plaintiff's counsel. First, the plaintiff has cited no authority, and the court has found *287 none, for the proposition that the defendants are barred from making their claims in the absence of such a motion. The defendants promptly voiced their objections at the close of the plaintiff's argument, requested curative instructions and excepted to the court's failure to give them. Therefore, the error, if any, was properly preserved and may be raised by this motion to set aside the verdict.
At the same time, it is at least relevant to the court's decision whether such an extreme remedy is required that the defendants did not request its equivalent when they could have during trial. They apparently believed then that curative instructions would have been adequate to remedy any injury although now, in their supplemental memorandum of law dated September 14, 1998, they argue that "[p]laintiff's argument was so inflammatory that no curative instruction could remove the prejudicial impact." "The Connecticut Supreme Court has looked with disfavor on attempts to claim unfair prejudice after an unfavorable verdict by moving to set aside the verdict where there was no prior motion for mistrial. In Archambeault v.Jamelle,
While the court does not consider that the defendants have waived their right to raise these issues, it will consider their failure to move for a mistrial as one factor in determining the necessity of a new trial to remedy the injury of which they complain.
A golden rule argument is one that "urges jurors to put themselves in a particular party's place . . . or into a particular party's shoes." (Citation omitted.) Walton v.Manchester,
The only Connecticut case in which a golden rule argument is discussed is Begley v. Kohl Madden Printing Ink Co.,
In ruling on the defendants' objection to this argument, the court analyzed it as an attempt to "concretize damages." While the court adheres to that construction of the plaintiff's argument, having read the cases cited by the parties in their posttrial briefs, the court cannot blink the fact that it comes close to the kind of appeal to sympathy or self-interest found in the typical golden rule argument. It is similar to the argument condemned in Russell v. Chicago, Rock Island Pacific R. Co.,
That is the case here as well. First, it is important to recall that the argument was addressed only to the jury's calculation of noneconomic damages.3 The jury's award was $137,500. While not a paltry sum, this is certainly *291 a modest award when it is considered in connection with the award of over one million dollars for economic damages. That award included a very large component for lost economic capacity over the rest of the plaintiff's life expectancy,4 due primarily to the pain he suffers from recurrent, severe and unpredictable headaches. In addition, he adduced evidence of a permanent disability of the brain, a serious inability to participate in and enjoy the activities of life in which he had engaged prior to the collision, as well as injuries to his neck, shoulders, spine and wrist. This evidence could have formed the basis of an award of noneconomic damages far greater than $137,500.
Furthermore, the plaintiff's argument did not go unremarked upon in the court's instructions. The members of the jury were cautioned in strong terms not to let sympathy play any role in their decision, and golden rule arguments have been analyzed as appeals to the sympathy of the jurors. The jurors were specifically instructed that they were free to disregard the entire argument that was the subject of the defendants' objection. That the jury was not carried away by that argument is shown not only in the amount of their award of noneconomic damages but in their assessment of twenty-five percent of the responsibility for his damages to the plaintiff, himself.
Therefore, whether or not the plaintiff's counsel crossed the line into golden rule territory, the court concludes that the defendants suffered no injury as a result of his argument and were not deprived of their right to a fair trial. *292
The court did not take the plaintiff's argument then, nor does it now, as a reflection on the defendants' character. It was clearly an attack on defense counsel's conduct of the case. As such, it was understandably resented by counsel and, in the court's opinion, was better left unsaid. The question, however, is whether the remarks of the plaintiff's counsel "prejudice[d] the ability of a party to obtain a fair trial . . . ." Yeske v.Avon Old Farms School, Inc.,
In analyzing the closing argument made by the counsel for the plaintiff, the court must heed the many cases holding that "some leeway must be afforded to the advocates in offering arguments to the jury in final argument. [I]n addressing the jury, [c]ounsel must be allowed a generous latitude in argument, as the limits of legitimate argument and fair comment cannot be determined precisely by rule and line, and something *293
must be allowed for the zeal of counsel in the heat of argument. . . . [The court] must review the comments complained of in the context of the entire trial." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Hansen,
At the trial and in argument on their motion to set aside the verdict, the defendants place great emphasis on Yeske. Suffice it to say that the level of abuse of counsel in Yeske was different in kind not just in degree from the single remark made by plaintiff's counsel here. It pervaded the "entire argument," and was considered along with the "courtroom behavior"6 of the offending counsel during trial in the trial judge's decision to set aside the verdict. Yeske v. Avon Old Farms School, Inc., supra,
A case closer to the present one is Rizzo Pool Co. v. DelGrosso,
The "clear and emphatic charge" given in Rizzo Pool Co. v. DelGrosso, id, which the court found sufficient to dispel any possible prejudice, made no specific reference to counsel's objectionable remarks either in argument or at other points in the trial. It consisted of the same admonitions to the jurors against sympathy and against going outside the evidence to find facts and the same injunctions to base their verdict on the evidence, and not on arguments of counsel, as were given by the court to the jury in the present case.
It is fair to say that the defense in the present case on the issue of damages consisted of a thoroughgoing attack on the credibility and integrity of not only the plaintiff but also his family members who testified, and the expert witnesses who testified in substantiation of his damages claims. No witnesses were offered by the defendants on any of the damages claims. No witnesses were offered by the defendants on any of the damages issues. While that is the prerogative of the defendant in any case, and there is nothing improper in the efforts of these defendants' counsel to conduct his case in this manner, it is in the context of this defense that the sole remark of plaintiff's counsel complained of must be evaluated.7
Counsel's attack on opposing counsel's argument in Del Grosso was at least as objectionable as the argument complained of here and was part of a pattern, unlike *295 the single reference here. Nevertheless, noting that "the defendants themselves vigorously pursued their claim that the plaintiff had engaged in fraud and deception"; id.; as did the defendants here, the court in Del Grosso found that the "defendants have not demonstrated that they are entitled to a new trial due to the inappropriate remarks of the plaintiff's counsel." Id., 689.8
The court reaches the same conclusion here. An appraisal of the "atmosphere prevailing in the courtroom"; Yeske v. Avon Old FarmsSchool, Inc., supra,
The verdict, itself, shows that the jurors were not influenced by "prejudice, corruption or partiality"; Foley v. Huntington Co., supra,