Robinson v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 16 March 1976
• Docket Number: No. 7192,7192
• Citation: Robinson v. General Motors Corp., 328 So.2d 751 (La. App. 1976)
• Parties: Sandra P. ROBINSON et al. v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION et al.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana

Page 751

328 So.2d 751

Sandra P. ROBINSON et al. v.GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION et al.

No. 7192.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.

March 16, 1976.

Benjamin J. Birdsall, Jr., Birdsall, Alverez & Rodriguez, New Orleans, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Gordon F. Wilson, Jr., Dodge, Friend, Wilson & Spedale, New Orleans, for defendants-appelleesShirley H. Bordelon and St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co.

Peter L. Bernard, Jr., Jerry L. Saporito, Bernard, Micholet & Cassisa, Metairie, for defendant-appelleeGeneral Motors Corp.

Before SAMUEL, REDMANN and SCHOTT, JJ.

REDMANN, Judge.

A jury answering 'interrogatories''award(ed)' to each of three personal injury plaintiffs the exact amount of medical expenses and, for one plaintiff, lost wages, but for each plaintiff awarded 'none' as damages for pain and suffering.Plaintiffs appeal from the judgment against their host driver and her insurer for the amount of those 'awards', seeking increase in quantum.

Juries have 'much discretion', C.C. 1934(3), in assessing non-pecuniary damages.'The question', states Bitoun v. Landry, La.1974, 302 So.2d 278, 279, 'is not whether a different award might have been more appropriate, but whether the award of the trial court can be reasonably supported by the evidence and justifiable inferences from the evidence before it.'

The inferences which the jury may have made in this case--and it is not our function to agree or disagree, but only to decide their reasonable supportability--include that all testimony of pain and suffering was exaggerated (e.g., blood 'gushing' from one plaintiff's bleeding nose, compared to the doctor's description of a 'tiny laceration'), and that, for one plaintiff, actual hospitalization for 12 days (at least in part because of a pre-existing and unaffected heart condition) and loss of wages for six weeks, and, for all plaintiffs, additional medical examinations and treatment for neck and back pains three and a half months after the accident (when all three went to the same doctor at the same time) could not fairly be attributed to the accident.

Perhaps the jury felt that by awarding the full amount of medical expenses and lost wages, including those not due to the accident--a total of $1,592 for Mrs. Pasqua, $224 for Mrs. Morrissey and $173 for the mother of nine-year-old Robinson--it was sufficiently compensating for both legitimate pecuniary losses and for pain and suffering as well.Perhaps those same amounts in a general verdict...