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Pugliese v. Perdue9/3/1999
edibility was challenged in numerous respects. On this basis, Perdue reasons that the jury might have rejected Dr. Vrablik's opinion as to causation and might instead have concluded that Pugliese injured himself at work, where he was regularly required to do heavy lifting.
But this reasoning misinterprets Dr. Vrablik's testimony. While the doctor unquestionably relied heavily on Pugliese's report in concluding that the collision had caused Pugliese's injury, his testimony indicates that he relied on objective medical evidence -- his own physical examination (which included significant objective observations) and the results of EMG testing -- to form his underlying opinion that Pugliese had recently begun to experience pain from irritation to his right L-5 nerve root. Perdue did not rebut, or even seriously challenge, the medical basis for this underlying Conclusion. Neither did he refute or challenge Dr. Vrablik's unequivocal testimony that Pugliese's L-5 irritation required some form of precipitating trauma.
Pugliese thus made a compelling, essentially unrebutted showing that when he visited Dr. Vrablik in May 1994, he had recently experienced some form of traumatic injury to his back. And because Perdue offered no evidence at all tending to show that Pugliese had experienced any recent trauma other than the April 1994 collision, a verdict finding that Pugliese's injuries resulted from some other traumatic cause would have required sheer speculation.
Indeed Perdue never requested the jury to reach such a verdict. To the contrary, by arguing that Pugliese's claims were "embellished" and "overstated" and by expressly acknowledging that Pugliese was "entitled to some compensation ," Perdue effectively conceded the existence of a compensable, collision-related injury. Although we have held that this concession did not meet the legal test for a binding admission of liability, it nonetheless reflects defense counsel's perception of the case at the close of the trial. To this limited extent the concession can help us set realistic limits on inferences that the jury could reasonably draw from the evidence. Perdue's concession thus reinforces the Conclusion that the evidence supporting an award of no damages at all "was so . . . slight and unconvincing as to make the verdict plainly unreasonable and unjust."
Richey v. Oen also reinforces this Conclusion. Oen's car bumped into the rear of a car driven by Richey, causing almost no visible damage. Richey sued Oen, claiming that the accident had seriously injured her back, requiring surgery. The gist of Oen's defense was that Richey's injuries were pre-existing. The trial court granted Richey's motion for a directed verdict on Oen's negligence but sent the causation question to the jury. After the jury returned a verdict finding that Richey suffered no injuries from the accident and awarding no damages, Richey unsuccessfully moved for a new trial and for a judgment n.o.v.
We affirmed the trial court's order denying a new trial, concluding "that the evidence supporting the jury's Conclusion is so slight or unconvincing as to render the verdict either unfair or unreasonable." But in reaching this Conclusion, we pointed to "a plethora of conflicting testimony concerning the nature and extent of Richey's lower back injury." Specifically, we described a conflict concerning whether Richey had immediately complained about back pain, testimony from four experts acknowledging that Richey suffered from a degenerative back problem caused by several prior accidents, evidence establishing that Richey had been treated for lower back pain a short time before the accident, Richey's apparently deliberate denial of her extens
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