Taylor v. Lapomarda

• Decision Date: 07 November 1997
• Citation: 702 A.2d 685,1997 Me. 216
• Parties: Brooke TAYLOR v. Pasquale LAPOMARDA, Jr., d/b/a the Casa Company
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 685

702 A.2d 685

1997 ME 216

Brooke TAYLOR v.Pasquale LAPOMARDA, Jr., d/b/a the Casa Company

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Oct. 10, 1997.

Decided Nov. 7, 1997.

Paul F. Macri(orally), William D. Robitzek, Berman & Simmons, P.A., Lewiston, John G. Connor, Portland, for plaintiff.

Jonathan W. Brogan(orally), Norman, Hansonb & DeTroy, Portland, for defendant.

Before WATHEN, C.J., and ROBERTS, CLIFFORD, RUDMAN and LIPEZ, JJ.

RUDMAN, Justice.

¶1Brooke Taylor appeals from the judgment entered in the Superior Court(Cumberland County, Mills, J.) denying her motion for a mistrial and for a new trial or, in the alternative, for entry of a judgment conforming to the jury's intent, to correct the "clerical error" of failing to enter a judgment consistent with the jury's intent, or for additur to increase the verdict to an amount conforming to the jury's intent.On appeal, Taylor contends that evidence that the jury misunderstood the comparative negligence portion of the verdict form, obtained by the court after the jury's discharge, mandates a mistrial and a new trial.We disagree and affirm the judgment.

I.

¶2 Taylor initiated this negligence action after she fell from a staircase at property maintained by Pasquale Lapomarda, Jr.The trial court instructed the jury on comparative negligence and the use of the special verdict form.¹Taylor has not contested either the sufficiency of the instructions of law or the court's directions as to the use of the jury verdict form.

¶3 The original verdict form returned by the jury stated that Taylor's negligence was equal to or greater than Lapomarda's negligence.However, contrary to the judge's instructions and to the directions printed on the verdict form, the jury proceeded to answer questions four and five, ² stating that Taylor's total damages were $8,500 and that her damages minus a sum for her contributory negligence equalled $500.

¶4 Noting the inconsistency in the verdict form, Taylor moved for a mistrial.The court declined to grant a mistrial, choosing to reinstruct the jury and to give them a second verdict form.The jury's responses to the second form were identical to its responses to the first, except for its statement that Taylor's negligence was not equal to or greater than Lapomarda's negligence.After the reading of this verdict, the court asked the parties if they had "anything further before the jury is discharged."Both parties responded in the negative.The court then discharged the jury, and the jury left the courtroom.After the jury was discharged, however, Taylor again moved for a mistrial, contending that because the jury had returned two verdicts "which are entirely inconsistent with each other," it must have misapprehended the court's instructions.Before the court could rule on this motion, the jury officer interrupted to inform the court that the jury wished to speak to it.The jury officer indicated that, after the jury had left the courtroom, members of the jury stated that they had intended to award Taylor $8,000 and that they had "messed up really bad."In response to this information, the court sent the jury a note stating:

Members of the jury, I understand from the deputy that you would like to speak to me.Please write down on paper anything you would like me to know.Thank you. /s/ JusticeMills.

Subsequently, the jury replied:

Your honor:

We the jury feel that question # 5 is written to mean 2 things; either the net amount of the award or the amount of damages deductible for Plaintiff's negligence.

Our intent is to award Brooke Taylor a net amount after deducting her negligence from Mr. Lapomarda's of:

$8,500 - $500 = $8,000

(Mr. Lapomarda)(Ms. Taylor) Net to Ms. Taylor Taylor then reiterated her motion for a mistrial, which the court denied.The court later entered a judgment for Taylor in the amount of $0.³Taylor then moved for a mistrial and for a new trial or, in the alternative, "for the entry of judgment based on the jury's note to the presiding Justice, or to correct a clerical error pursuant to M.R. Civ. P. 60(a) of failing to enter judgment consistent with the jury's intent, or for additur to increase the judgment in plaintiff's favor to $8,000, as the jury apparently intended."The court denied Taylor's motion, stating, "the verdict in this case should not be disturbed as a result of the communication from the jury after it was discharged."This appeal followed.

II.

¶5We review the denial of a motion for a mistrial for an abuse of discretion.Sheltra v. Rochefort, 667 A.2d 868, 871(Me.1995)."A trial court's discretion to grant a motion for a mistrial is limited to those rare cases where no remedy short of a new trial will satisfy the interests of justice."Id.(citations omitted).Similarly, "[t]he trial court's disposition of a motion for a new trial will be upheld unless shown to be a 'clear and manifest abuse of discretion.' "LeClair v. Commercial Union Ins. Co., 679 A.2d 90, 92(Me.1996)(quotingMcCain Foods, Inc. v. Gervais, 657 A.2d 782, 783(Me.1995)).

¶6 Contrary to Taylor's contentions, the trial court did not exceed the bounds of its discretion by not granting her motion for a mistrial and for a new trial.Taylor argues that because the answers reflected on the first verdict form were internally inconsistent, because the answers reflected on the second verdict form were inconsistent with the answers on the first verdict form, and because the jury's note demonstrates an intent inconsistent with both verdicts, no means short of a new trial existed to reconcile the jury's "diverging views of the case."This argument misperceives the trial court's limited authority to inquire into a jury verdict following the discharge of the jury.Maine Rule of Evidence 606(b) states:

Upon an inquiry into the validity of a verdict or indictment, a juror may not testify as to any matter or statement occurring during the course of the jury's deliberations or to the effect of anything upon his or any other juror's mind or emotions as influencing him to assent to or dissent from the verdict or indictment or concerning his mental processes in connection therewith, except that a juror may testify on the question whether extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury's attention or whether any outside influence was improperly brought to bear upon any juror.Nor may his affidavit or evidence of any statement by him concerning a matter about which he would be precluded from testifying be received.

This rule codifies the "settled doctrine of this State" that evidence of juror statements "may be offered only to show external misconduct of individual jurors or the exertion of outside influence upon the jury."Marr v. Shores, 495 A.2d 1202, 1204(Me.1985)(citations omitted)."This rule excludes ... testimony from a juror about his or her own thought processes in arriving at the verdict.A juror cannot testify that the juror misunderstood the evidence or the instruction ... If the law were to allow a juror to testify to these matters having no verifiable external manifestations, no verdict would be safe."Field & Murray, Maine Evidence§ 606.2 at 248-49 (4th ed.1997).

¶7 Taylor does not allege that the jury's verdict was the product of external juror misconduct or an outside influence.Her basis for challenging the verdict--that the jury did not understand how to calculate comparative negligence using the verdict form--falls outside the limited inquiry into jury verdicts permitted by Rule 606(b).Nevertheless, Taylor urges us to engage in a fact-specific inquiry and to find that, despite the jury's discharge, it was "still together in the courthouse functioning as a jury" when it sent its note to the court.Such an inquiry would be a marked departure from our prior decisions and one that we deem neither wise nor desirable.

¶8 In Patterson v. Rossignol, we articulated the public policy considerations that militate against permitting jurors to impeach their verdicts:

(1) the need for stability of verdicts; (2) the need to conclude litigation and desire to prevent any prolongation thereof; (3) the need to protect jurors in their communications to fellow jurors made in the confidence of secrecy of the jury room; (4) the need to save jurors harmless from tampering and harassment by disappointed litigants; (5) the need to foreclose jurors from abetting the setting aside of verdicts to which they may have agreed reluctantly in the first place or about which they may in the light of subsequent developments have doubts or a change of attitude.

245 A.2d 852, 857(Me.1968).Subsequently, in Cyr v. Michaud, we determined that these policy considerations "apply to prohibit correcting a mistake in the recording of a verdict by using evidence, obtained after juror discharge, to establish that the jury misunderstood the verdict form provided to them."454 A.2d 1376, 1383(Me.1983).⁴

¶9 The facts of Cyr are very similar to the facts of this case.In Cyr, the jury found that the plaintiff's total damages were $100,000 and, in response to the question, "[t]o what dollar and cents amounts do you deem it just and equitable having regard to the plaintiff, Mary Ann Cyr's fault, to reduce the total damages," awarded the plaintiff $80,000.Id. at 1379.After the jury's discharge, a third person informed the court that one of the jurors had indicated that the jury had intended to reduce the plaintiff's damages by $80,000 and thus only to award her $20,000.Id. at 1381.Subsequently, the defendant secured affidavits from all of the jurors stating that their verdict was to award the plaintiff $20,000.Id. at 1379, 1381.We found "that the policy considerations in favor of finality of a judgment and especially those in preventing juror harassment outweigh any benefit to be obtained by permitting inquiry into the juror's thought processes after the jury has been discharged."Id. at 1383.To this end, w...