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Robin v. Allstate Indemnity Co.12/8/2004
AFFIRMED.
Allstate Indemnity Company appeals a jury verdict awarding Noran J. Robin (Joe) damages for a back injury he suffered when Allstate's insured, Norman Breaux, rear-ended the truck driven by Joe. Allstate complains about evidentiary rulings of the trial court and about the amount of damages awarded by the jury. We affirm.
FACTS
On September 3, 2000, Joe and his wife Rebecca were traveling with their friends, Michelle and Danny Dugas, to Mermentau to go crabbing. They were traveling in Joe's three-door Chevrolet truck, towing the Dugases' boat. At the time of the accident, there was a temporary red light erected on LA Highway 82 in Cameron Parish. The red light had been set up to control traffic while a bridge was being repaired.
Breaux was traveling behind the Robin vehicle. Breaux was employed by Trico Marine to drive boat crews to Cameron from Houma. He was driving a Ford six-passenger van when he rear-ended the Robin vehicle. As a result of the accident, Joe suffered an annular disruption at the L4-5 level which required fusion surgery by orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Cobb. He also had to have his lateral femoral cutaneous nerve surgically decompressed. At the time of trial, Joe was continuing treatment with Dr. Daniel Hodges for pain management and Dr. Ted Friedberg, a clinical psychologist, for depression.
Joe and his wife filed suit against Trico, Breaux, Allstate, and their own automobile insurer, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, for the injuries they sustained as a result of the accident. Prior to trial, it was stipulated that Breaux was liable and in the course and scope of his employment with Trico. Trial on the issue of damages was held before a jury on January 13, 14, and 15, 2003.
After presentation of the Plaintiffs' case, the Defense presented no witnesses of its own. The jury returned a verdict awarding damages to both Joe and Rebecca. The Defendants filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) claiming the verdict in favor of Joe was unreasonably high. The trial court denied the JNOV on April 17, 2003, and this appeal by Defendants followed.
EVIDENTIARY RULINGS
The Defendants have raised two issues involving evidentiary rulings by the trial court. The first issue raised by the Defendants is that the trial court erred when it excluded detailed evidence that the opinions of the Robins' economist, Douglas Womack, and their vocational rehabilitation counselor and certified life-care planner, Glenn Hebert, had not been accepted by other courts.
At trial the Defendants sought to introduce the opinions from cases rendered by the circuit courts and the supreme court in which the opinions of the experts were rejected for some reason. The trial court refused to allow the Defendants to introduce the actual opinions from the courts. The trial court reasoned that the facts and circumstances in the other cases would be different from the present case. The trial court did allow counsel for Defendants to question the two experts on whether their opinions have ever been rejected by other courts. Hebert replied that his opinion had been rejected four or five percent of the time by this court, and Womack responded that he did not know how many times his opinion had been rejected because he did not follow the cases after he had testified.
In Rowe v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, 95-669, p. 14 (La.App. 3 Cir. 3/6/96), 670 So.2d 718, 727, writ denied, 96-824 (La. 5/17/96), 673 So.2d 611, this court, in reviewing matters concerning an expert doctor's bias, recognized that the "facts disclosed in other proceedings are admissible,
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