Jamie Wilson v. William Condon

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