Opinion
No. 06-3036-cv.
November 1, 2007.
AFTER ARGUMENT AND UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.
CHARLES C. GOETSCH, New Haven, CT, for Plaintiff-Appellant.
WILLIAM G. BALLAINE, DAWN PINKSTON, New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellee.
PRESENT: HON. WILFRED FEINBERG, HON. RALPH K. WINTER, HON. CHESTER J. STRAUB, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff David E. Roberts appeals from the judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Peter C. Dorsey, Judge) awarding him, after a jury trial, damages of $1,425,000 in the wrongful death action he brought as administrator of the estate of his deceased brother, Gregory J. Roberts, against National Railroad Passenger Corp., also known as Amtrak. Roberts offers three primary challenges to the jury charge delivered at trial. As we conclude that none of Roberts' arguments presented on this appeal have merit, we affirm the judgment of the District Court.
First, Roberts argues that the District Court erred in instructing the jury that their award for compensatory damages should simply be "net of expenses and taxes," instead of Roberts' preferred phrasing — "net earnings," which Roberts defines as being "calculated by deducting the decedent's income taxes and personal living expenses from his gross earnings." Roberts contends that his preferred phrasing would require the jury to deduct only expenses related to Roberts' personal "food, shelter, clothing, and health care" needs while the District Court's language permits the jury to deduct additional items.
Assuming that Roberts preserved this objection at trial, our standard of review of the jury charge is de novo and we "will set aside a judgment secured by an erroneous charge only if the appellant shows that the error was prejudicial in light of the charge as a whole." SR Int'l Bus. Ins. Co., Ltd. v. World Trade Ctr. Props., LLC, 467 F.3d 107, 119 (2d Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Roberts has demonstrated no such error by the District Court. To the contrary, the two Connecticut Supreme Court decisions on which Roberts largely relies weigh against his argument. See Carrano v. Yale-New Haven Hosp., 279 Conn. 622, 649-53 (2006); Floyd v. Fruit Indus., Inc., 144 Conn. 659, 675 (1957). The court in Floyd stated that the trial court was "technically in error in charging, in effect, that the decedent's expenses for recreation and hobbies should be deducted as `personal living expenses' . . ., and in refusing the substance of a request to charge which would have more precisely excluded from personal living expenses the cost of maintenance of the decedent's wife and children." 144 Conn. at 675. However, the court held that such an error "cannot be considered material" due to the "impossibility of making any exact mathematical computation" of such elements of damages in a wrongful death claim. Id. at 675-77 (affirming the judgment of the trial court in its entirety). In contrast, the Connecticut Supreme Court discovered no error whatsoever in the wording of the jury charge in Carrano, 279 Conn. at 622. Instead, the trial court erred in awarding judgment to the plaintiff despite the fact that the plaintiff had presented evidence that was "inadequate as a matter of law" of the decedent's likely future income taxes or personal living expenses. Id. at 645, 652 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Neither Floyd nor Carrano articulated a rule that a trial court may only use the language advanced here by Roberts in charging the jury on a wrongful death claim. While the District Court might have provided more explanation as to what "expenses" the jury should consider in calculating Roberts' damages, the jury charge did not contain even the "technical . . . err[or]" described in Floyd, 144 Conn. at 659. As such, the District Court did not commit error, let alone prejudicial error, in instructing the jury to calculate Roberts' compensatory damages "net of expenses and taxes."
Roberts' second challenge on appeal involves the language used in the jury charge regarding discounting future cash flows to present value for purposes of calculating damages. Roberts argues that the District Court should have instructed the jury that it should only apply a 2% real interest rate to discount such flows to present value. Instead, the District Court simply instructed that "future loss awards must be discounted to presented value. . . . Any award for future damages must allow for the fact that money received today earn interest in the future, but it will also lose value with inflation, over time."
Although Roberts contends that the jury charge "gave no guidance whatsoever as to how inflation is to [be] taken into account," he has identified no authority requiring juries to apply only a 2% real discount rate or to provide more explanation of the language quoted above. As with his first challenge, Roberts relies on inapplicable and unpersuasive case law. See DeChico v. Metro-North Commuter R.R., 758 F.2d 856 (2d Cir. 1985); Doca v. Marina Mercante Nicaraguense, S. A., 634 F.2d 30 (2d Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 971 (1981). Both DeChico and Doca involved federal, not Connecticut, law. Moreover, in Doca, we "emphasize[d] that we [were] not requiring the use of an adjusted discount rate, nor specifying that when such a rate is used, it must be set at 2%." 634 F.2d at 40. In DeChico, we reversed the district court on the ground that its jury instruction on discounting future cash flows neglected to address inflation, a problem not present here. 758 F.2d at 861. As there is no legal support for the proposition that Connecticut requires a 2% real discount rate to be applied to wrongful death claims, Roberts' challenge to the judgment of the District Court fails on this ground.
Finally, Roberts argues that the District Court improperly included language in its jury charge regarding the issue of willful or intentional conduct on the part of Amtrak, in spite of the fact that Roberts had only alleged reckless and wanton conduct. In charging the jury, the District Court defined the terms "reckless" and "willful" as follows:
"An act is reckless when it is done in such a manner and under such circumstances as to show an utter disregard for, and indifference to, the rights and safety of others. An act is done willfully when it is done voluntarily or intentionally."
At various other points in the jury charge, the District Court used the phrases "reckless or willful conduct" and "recklessly or willfully." Although Roberts does not argue that the District Court incorrectly defined these terms, he argues that the inclusion of any instruction on willfulness confused the jury as to the meaning of recklessness.
The Connecticut Supreme Court recently restated the appropriate standard of review of a jury instruction:
"[A] charge to the jury is to be considered in its entirety, read as a whole, and judged by its total effect rather than by its individual component parts. . . . As long as [the instructions] are correct in law, adapted to the issues and sufficient for the guidance of the jury . . . we will not view the instructions as improper. . . . Instructions are adequate if they give the jury a clear understanding of the issues and proper guidance in determining those issues."
Smith v. Town of Greenwich, 278 Conn. 428, 437 (2006) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Roberts has offered no persuasive argument why the instructions given by the District Court provided insufficient guidance to the jury on the issue of reckless. The definition of recklessness provided by the District Court conforms to Connecticut law. See Matthiessen v. Vanech, 266 Conn. 822, 831-34 (2003). Moreover, in proposing language for the District Court to use in the verdict form, Roberts argued that "is sufficient for the Court simply to ask [the jury]: `Do you find that Defendant's conduct was done recklessly or willfully?'" The District Court then used Roberts' suggested language — "recklessly or willfully" — in the verdict form. It was not error for the District Court to use and define accurately the same language in its charge to the jury. Indeed, a failure by the District Court to do so would likely have caused more confusion than that imagined by Roberts in this appeal.
In sum, we have considered all arguments presented by Roberts in this appeal and find them to be without merit. For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the District Court.