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Webb Wheel Products12/30/2004
required to do, Waddell & Reed, Inc. v. United Investors Life Ins. Co., 875 So. 2d 1143 (Ala. 2003), including evidence of the status of the exit report when Hanvey signed it, Hill's use of the phrase "let go" is inconsistent with an employee's merely being laid off. Furthermore, there is no testimony indicating that there were no more pallets to be repaired and therefore no more work for Hanvey to do so that a layoff was called for before the end of the day. Additionally, Link testified that the decision to lay off Hanvey was made on the morning of October 19. The jury could have inferred from the two-hour delay that Link was consulted and that he instructed Hill to go ahead and discharge Hanvey before he would have been subject to being laid off as a result of the reduction in workforce. We cannot say as a matter of law, without impermissibly reweighing the evidence, that the jury could not have concluded that Webb Wheel's stated reason for Hanvey's discharge was pretextual. Consequently, Webb Wheel was not entitled to a JML, and the trial court properly denied its postjudgment motion on that basis.
III. Damages
Having concluded that Webb Wheel was not entitled to a JML, we turn to its arguments that the damages awarded by the jury were excessive.
A. Compensatory Damages
The jury awarded Hanvey $80,000 in compensatory damages. Because the verdict was a general verdict, we cannot say exactly what percentage of the $80,000 was attributable to lost wages or lost benefits. See, e.g., Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Auth. v. Arvan, 669 So. 2d 825 (Ala. 1995). Hanvey presented evidence that he was paid $11.05 per hour for a 40-hour week, a weekly wage of $442, and that his wages from October 19, 2000, to June 15, 2001, the date on which he began new employment, would have been $13,702. He also presented evidence indicating that the value of the fringe benefits he had not received from the time he left Webb Wheel until the trial ranged from a low estimate of $4,760 ($140 per month) to a high estimate of $10,200 ($300 per month). Therefore, the most that Hanvey's economic damages could have been would be $23,902. Therefore, at least $56,000 of the compensatory damages must be attributed to mental anguish.
The only argument Webb Wheel makes concerning the compensatory-damages award is that Hanvey is precluded as a matter of law from recovering any lost wages after Webb Wheel attempted to recall him and he refused to return to work. It argues that, at the least, the trial court should have remitted the compensatory-damages award by $9,062. Webb Wheel argues that Hanvey's lost wages from October 19, 2000, to March 2, 2001, were $8,840 and that benefits lost during that period were, at most, $6,000. The fallacy in its argument is that with a general verdict, we cannot say exactly how much of the award is attributable to lost wages. For all that appears, the jury could have awarded Hanvey economic damages only from October 19, 2000, to March 2, 2001, thus making its award for mental anguish greater than $56,000. Webb Wheel never argues, as would have been appropriate, that because Hanvey admitted that if he had not been discharged on October 19, he would have been laid off by November 1, when the third round of layoffs proceeded at Webb Wheel, damages could not be recovered beyond November
1. Had Webb Wheel so argued, then the most the jury could have awarded Hanvey in economic damages would have been slightly more than $1,000 (two weeks' wages at $442 per week and fringe benefits for one-half month at $150).
Webb Wheel has not challenged the mental-anguish-damages award as excessive under Kmart Corp. v. Kyles, 723 So. 2d 572 (Al
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