Wildeboar v. Petersen
| Decision Date | 16 February 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 31026.,31026. |
| Parties | WILDEBOAR v. PETERSEN. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Tama County; James W. Willett, Judge.
Action to recover damages for forcible defilement. Judgment for the plaintiff in the court below. Defendant appeals. Opinion states the facts. Reversed, and new trial ordered.Thomas & Thomas, of Traer, for appellant.
J. H. Scales, of Ackley, R. P. Kepler, of Toledo, and C. A. Pratt, of Traer, for appellee.
This action is brought to recover damages based on the alleged forcible defilement of the plaintiff by the defendant. The plaintiff in her petition, after having alleged the facts upon which she predicates her right to recover, says that because of the defilement and as a natural consequence thereof she gave birth to a child, to her great injury, and further as a proximate result of said defilement, she became sick and sore and sustained injury to her person, health, reputation, and feelings, suffered great humiliation and sorrow, to her damage in the sum of $15,000, and a further sum of $200 which she was compelled thereby to pay for medicine, medical treatment, and nursing.
The cause was tried to a jury, and a verdict returned for the plaintiff in the sum of $5,150. The jury at the time it returned its verdict returned also answers to special interrogatories submitted by the court as follows:
[1] It is the contention of the defendant that the amount of exemplary damages allowed is so disproportioned to the amount of actual damages assessed that the verdict ought not to stand as returned. This we think must be sustained. In holding this we do not enter into a discussion of the sufficiency of the evidence to justify the jury's finding as to the actual damages sustained.
It is true the amount of exemplary damages allowed in any particular case rests in the sound discretion of the jury. In the exercise of this discretion the jury cannot be allowed to assess exemplary damages grossly disproportioned to the amount of actual damages found by the jury. The actual expenses, as shown by this record, sustained by the plaintiff were $57.05 for her doctor's bill, and $16 for the services of an undertaker in burying the child. It appears that the child died soon after its birth. It will be noted that the plaintiff in her petition claimed $200 on account of this matter.
It is apparent that the jury was misled in assessing actual damages, but we have no way of knowing just how much the jury would have assessed had the court not placed a maximum limit on the amount it could assess as actual damages.
The court in its fifteenth instruction, given as a guide to the jury as to what might be considered in determining and fixing the amount which plaintiff was entitled to recover as actual damage, after reciting her claim, said in substance:
“You are instructed that the plaintiff is entitled to compensatory or actual damages, * * * and you may include in such damages the elements of physical pain, mental suffering, insult, vexation, disgrace, loss of capacity to work, expenses of nursing and medical treatment, including the expense of burial casket for plaintiff's dead baby, not to exceed under the pleadings and prayer of plaintiff's petition the sum of $200.”
And it further said that:
“In case you find that the plaintiff is entitled to recover of the defendant actual or compensatory damages, and you believe from the evidence that the assault upon plaintiff by the defendant and his acts complained of in said petition, including the forcible defilement of plaintiff by defendant, therein charged, were willful, wanton or vicious, conceived in the spirit of indifference to the civil obligations due the plaintiff from defendant, and uncalled-for in their character, then the jury may add to such actual damages, if any such they find, such a sum as they may believe from the evidence will be reasonableand just as exemplary damages or smart money, not exceeding the sum of fifteen thousand dollars.”
[2] Now it is apparent from the statement of the plaintiff claimed in her petition that the $200 claimed as actual damages was limited to the amount which she was required to pay, or...
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