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Dunn v. Maras2/2/1995
) required it to ignore those portions of several juror affidavits that related "the affiant juror's mental processes" or that speculated "as to the effect of the Blankenship and Roberts statements upon other jurors." But the trial court added, by way of aside,
However, it is interesting to note that no juror states that his verdict would have been otherwise but for the Blankenship and Roberts statements.
For the reasons that follow, we hold that the trial court erred in its application of the reasonable possibility standard.
First, though it may have been interesting to note, the trial court was obligated to ignore evidence that none of the jurors claimed to have been affected by Roberts's revelation of the settlement. Just as the parties were precluded from submitting such evidence to the trial court, the trial court was also precluded from drawing any negative inference from the absence of such evidence.
We next consider the trial court's reflection that evidence of settlement can cut both ways. Jurors might indeed have taken Samaritan's settlement as a concession of the liability of the defendant doctors. But jurors might equally have taken the settlement as an indication that the only culpable party had settled.
It is well understood by lawyers and Judges experienced in such matters that in a case where evidence is offered of the payment of a substantial sum for a covenant not to sue, the jury considers it evidence that the covenantee is the party responsible for the injury , and that defendant or defendants should be exculpated.
Egurrola v. Szychowski, 95 Ariz. 194, 199, 388 P.2d 242, 245 (1964) (quoting De Lude v. Rimek, 351 Ill. App. 466, 115 N.E.2d 561 (Ill. 1953)). Alternatively, jurors might have concluded that plaintiffs had achieved a substantial settlement from an institutional defendant and were merely overreaching by pursuing the individual doctors. It would be speculative to suggest that members of the jury drew one rather than another of these Conclusions, but it is not speculative to recognize the possibility that they might have drawn any of these Conclusions.
It was plaintiffs who moved in limine before trial to exclude reference to the Samaritan settlement, and it was defendants who objected. The reasonable possibility of prejudice that led the trial court to grant plaintiffs' pretrial motion had not vanished by trial's end. Although we share the trial court's post-trial assessment that evidence of settlement can cut either way, the trial court failed to follow this point to its Conclusion. Because such information can cut either way, the trial court should have recognized the reasonable possibility that it cut against the plaintiffs.
We come last to the trial court's explanation that, if Roberts's revelation of a settlement had any prejudicial tendency, the prejudice was probably confined to damages, an issue the jury did not reach. We disagree. As indicated above, Roberts's disclosure of Samaritan's settlement might have led some jurors to conclude either that the only culpable defendant had settled, see id., or that the plaintiffs were overreaching by continuing the case. By either means, the information might reasonably have shaped the jury's Conclusion on causation. Plaintiffs were not obliged to show an affirmative probability of such an effect; they were obliged to show only a reasonable possibility. They did so, and the trial court erred by denying their motion for new trial.
Conclusion
When juror affidavits demonstrate that "extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury's attention" and th
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