AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) - Jurors can’t just pick “numbers out of a hat” to award emotional damages in wrongful-death cases and lawyers can’t use irrelevant comparisons to guide them, the Texas Supreme Court ruled, setting down for the first time guidelines on noneconomic damages for relatives of fatal accidents.
The high court reversed a $16.8 million jury verdict and ordered a new trial over the death of a truck driver who was killed in a multi-vehicle pileup. The award included $15 million in emotional damages against the company that owned the 18-wheeler that started the accident by jackknifing on an icy highway near Amarillo in 2013.
“Mathematical precision is by no means required, but it is not enough for the plaintiff or his attorney merely to assert, without rational explanation, that a given amount or a given range is reasonable and just,” the Texas Supreme Court said in a June 16 decision. The court also ordered a new trial over the question of whether one of the other vehicles in the pileup should have been included as a defendant.
Around midnight on Nov. 23, 2013, Sarah Gregory was driving a New Prime tractor-trailer on an icy highway near Amarillo when the vehicle jackknifed, blocking the left lane and part of the right. The blockage eventually caused a pileup including two passenger cars and six more 18-wheelers.
Bhupinder Deol was driving one of the 18-wheelers. He avoided the New Prime truck but stopped after being clipped by another tractor-trailer. He got out to help occupants in other vehicles but was apparently crushed and killed by a van that was pushed forward by three other trucks.
Deol’s family sued Gregory and New Prime and a jury awarded them $16.8 million, including $15 million in damages for pain and suffering. New Prime appealed but the appeals court affirmed the verdict. New Prime appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which reversed and ordered a new trial. The case drew amicus briefs from interested parties including defense lawyers and trial attorneys.
Texas only allowed noneconomic damages if the plaintiff suffered physical injuries until the mid-1980s. Then, citing “present social realities,” the Texas Supreme Court said noneconomic damages would be allowed, without providing any guidance on how to calculate them.
In 2011, the state high court said plaintiffs must present evidence to justify mental anguish damages, and in 2013 the court said “juries cannot simply pick a number and fill in the blank.” Most of the subsequent cases involved defamation. The appeals court in the Deol case ruled wrongful death was different from defamation and could justify higher pain and suffering awards.
Not so, the Supreme Court ruled. “Though the magnitude of mental anguish may often be heightened in wrongful death cases, the jury’s task is the same,” the court said. “Any system that countenances the arbitrary `picking numbers out of a hat’ approach to compensatory damages awards is not providing the rational process of law that we are obligated to provide, or at least to strive for.”
Plaintiff attorneys also engaged in “unsubstantiated anchoring” in their closing arguments against New Prime, the court said, making reference to “objects or values with no rational connection to the facts of the case” including comparing his death to the $71 million cost of an F-18 fighter jet and a $186 million Rothko painting.
Lawyers urged jurors to give New Prime’s owners their “two cents worth” for each of the 650 million miles their trucks drove the year of the accident. Jurors ultimately awarded $38.8 million to all plaintiffs – including two that settled -- not far from the $39 million suggested by the “two cents” analogy.
Without offering more specific guidance, the high court said pain and suffering shouldn’t be tied to actual damages like lost wages since that would mean the families of well-paid victims would win more than poor ones. Courts should consider the “financial consequences of severe emotional disruption” or the cost of restoring the plaintiff’s “emotional health,” the court said.
“Courts and jurors alike should be told why a given amount of damages, or a range of amounts, would be reasonable and just compensation,” the court concluded.
Separately, the court said New Prime should have been able to introduce evidence Deol was killed because a second truck was traveling too fast and “steered aggressively to the right” and rolled over, blocking the rest of the highway and making further crashes inevitable. Deol was killed when yet another truck slammed into the pileup.