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There was a case in Allegheny County earlier this year in a similar vein, though it wasn't of the type to result in an opinion. A woman with cancer sued Johnson & Johnson claiming that their talcum powder contained asbestos. Plaintiff's counsel is a highly aggressive national plaintiff's firm out of Texas who regularly engage in questionable practices just to piss off defendants. They drive a hard bargain and aren't afraid to take a case to verdict. I actually sat in on this one for a few hours while I was at the courthouse attending to another matter, but I'm not familiar enough with the evidence to speculate on how the jury reached their conclusion. Anyway, per the verdict slip, the jury found that J&J's talcum powder did indeed contain asbestos, but that the Plaintiff had insufficiently proven that exposure to the powder caused her illness. The jury accordingly awarded $0 in compensatory damages. However, because they still thought J&J acted poorly, they tacked on $16 million in punitive damages. Unfortunately for the Plaintiff, since you can't receive punitive damages if the defendant isn't liable, she walked away with nothing, and the aggressive Plaintiff's firm who was used to winning just blew a couple hundred grand litigating a defense verdict that would have netted them millions if the jury had awarded a dollar for compensation.
The case you posted is an interesting one because it illustrates the difference between the way a case looks on paper and the way it presents in the courtroom. Haley was in an accident that the defendant unquestionably caused. She testified that the symptoms started immediately after the accident, sought medical treatment within a few days, was given a diagnosis, and has continually sought treatment over the succeeding years. There are objective diagnostic findings. The defense put forth incompetent experts. The plaintiffs got the testimony of treating physicians (rare), and had experts who were able to testify as to damages.
Yet the jury only awarded a fraction of the damages the Plaintiff asked for, and didn't award anything for pain and suffering. I looked Haley up, and she is a somewhat large young woman. I'm guessing she presented on the stand as overly dramatic, and that the jury didn't believe the damage evidence that she played sports in high school and worked out regularly and was depressed that she couldn't do these things anymore. There was also the testimony that suggests it was a relatively minor collision and not of the type where one would expect serious ongoing medical problems. They probably felt like since she wasn't at fault and obviously experienced some kind of injury she should get some money for the aggravation, but not enough to really mean anything, and they just skipped the pain and suffering part because, as the opinion notes, the jury doesn't have to award pain and suffering for the typical kinds of aggravation everyone experiences. In other words, girl gets in minor car crash, claims major injuries, okay, the other person was liable, but seriously? Except they don't know how to properly express this on the jury form and they end up giving the Plaintiff another bite at the apple. If they had awarded $12,000 in future expenses and $4,000 in pain and suffering then the verdict would be much harder to challenge.
I'm pretty defensive of the legal system here, because it usually works better than people give it credit for, but I'm not so in the bag for it that I don't realize that a system run by lawyers and judges gets us a system that works well for lawyers and judges. We spend so much time immersed in this stuff that it's easy to forget that people out in the real world don't have a clue about any of this and will do things that make sense to them but not to the court, which is a big problem when we're relying on them to make important decisions. I wouldn't have a problem with instructions that explained to the jury that yes, this can be second guessed by a court, and here are the reasons a court will second guess it. Saying someone suffered injuries resulting in thousands of dollars in medical treatment but didn't experience any pain and suffering beyond what is comparable to being sore for a few days doesn't make sense, and a court won't let it stand. Saying that the defendant didn't cause the plaintiff's injury but the defendant did bad stuff so they should pay anyway doesn't make sense, and a court won't let it stand. We fight over these jury instructions so much that we end up with something that might not make sense.
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