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SUAREZ v. DICKMONT PLASTICS CORPORATION2/18/1997
defendant further argues that the trial court improperly denied its motions to set aside the verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict because the jury's answers to the special interrogatories were inconsistent with the general verdict. Specifically, the defendant claims that the jury's affirmative response to interrogatory number two, without affirmative responses to interrogatory number one or three, requires a defense verdict because: (1) interrogatory number two relates to the question of whether the defendant intentionally created a dangerous condition; and (2) interrogatories numbers one and three, using alternative phrasings, focused on the alternate inquiry, that is, whether the plaintiff's injury was substantially certain to result from the defendant's conduct. The defendant therefore contends that the verdict should have been set aside because the jury's answers reflect that it concluded that the substantial certainty standard was not satisfied. We disagree.
"The role of an appellate court where an appellant seeks a judgment contrary to a general verdict on the basis of the jury's allegedly inconsistent answers to such interrogatories is extremely limited." O'Leary v. Industrial Park Corp., 14 Conn. App. 425, 430, 542 A.2d 333 (1988). "To justify the entry of a judgment contrary to a general verdict upon the basis of answers to interrogatories, those answers must be such in themselves as conclusively to show that as matter of law judgment could only be rendered for the party against whom the general verdict was found; they must negative every reasonable hypothesis as to the situation provable under the issues made by the pleadings; and in
determining that, the court may consider only the issues framed by the pleadings, the general verdict and the interrogatories, with the answers made to them, without resort to the evidence offered at the trial." Belchak v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co., 119 Conn. 630, 634, 179 A. 95 (1935); see DeJesus v. Craftsman Machinery Co., 16 Conn. App. 558, 572, 548 A.2d 736 (1988); Murteza v. State, 7 Conn. App. 196, 201, 508 A.2d 449 (1986).
"It is not the function of a court to search the record for conflicting answers in order to take the case away from the jury on a theory that gives equal support to inconsistent and uncertain inferences. When a claim is made that the jury's answers to interrogatories in returning a verdict are inconsistent, the court has the duty to attempt to harmonize the answers." Norrie v. Heil Co., 203 Conn. 594, 606, 525 A.2d 1332 (1987).
Contrary to the defendant's assertions, we conclude that the question of actual intent was placed before the jury and that the general verdict rendered in favor of the plaintiff is not inconsistent with the jury's answers to the interrogatories. The trial court clearly instructed the jury that it could find for the plaintiff if the jury found intentional misconduct based on either the actual intent or the substantial certainty standard. Furthermore, bearing in mind that the actual intent standard was indeed before the jury, we conclude that interrogatory number two reasonably could be interpreted to embrace the actual intent standard. We point out that the interrogatory does not inquire merely whether the defendant "deliberately put the policy in place," that is, whether the defendant intentionally created the situation. Instead, the interrogatory inquires whether "the defendant deliberately instructed the plaintiff to injure himself based on its policies regarding the cleaning of the plastic injection molding machine?" In our view, the interrogatory fairly could be read to inquire whether
the defendant deliberately caused the plaintiff to i
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