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noting complaints about the "imprecise nature" of expert opinion testimony "go to its weight, rather than its admissibility"
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No. 5-960 / 05-0403
Filed February 15, 2006
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Mark Cleve, Judge.
A plaintiff appeals following a jury verdict in his personal injury action, asserting evidentiary errors by the district court. AFFIRMED.
Robert Leyshon of Winstein, Kavensky Wallace, Rock Island, Illinois, for appellant.
Craig A. Levien and Edward J. Rose of Betty, Neuman McMahon, P.L.C., Davenport, for appellees.
Considered by Zimmer, P.J., and Miller and Vaitheswaran, JJ.
Travis Warner appeals following a jury verdict and judgment entry in his personal injury action against Dale and Mary Anne Moore. He contends the district court made two erroneous evidentiary rulings. We affirm the district court.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings.
Warner and Mary Anne Moore were involved in an automobile accident. Warner was traveling north on Northwest Boulevard, overtaking a slower-moving vehicle driven by Sean Cathcart. Moore's vehicle was stopped at a stop sign on Ripley Street at the intersection of Ripley Street and Northwest Boulevard. As Warner overtook the Cathcart vehicle and approached the Ripley Street intersection, Moore pulled out onto Northwest Boulevard. The Warner and Moore vehicles collided. Warner suffered physical injuries as a result of the accident.
Warner filed suit against Moore and her husband Dale, an owner of the Moore vehicle, alleging that Moore's negligence was a proximate cause of various damages incurred by Warner, including past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, and physical and mental pain and suffering. During trial the district court ruled that Warner could not offer testimony that his mental pain and suffering was contributed to by income lost as a result of the accident, which in turn had led to financial difficulties and required him and his then-fiancé to take certain actions such as postponing the couple's wedding, selling an engagement ring and furniture, and delaying purchase of a home. The court also overruled Warner's motion in limine which sought to prevent the Moores' expert accident reconstructionist, Warren Beine, from testifying that Warner was traveling at a minimum speed of forty-eight miles per hour at the time of the accident.
Following trial the jury found Warner had sustained damages of $4,506.12 in past medical expenses and $2,500 for past pain and suffering. The jury assessed sixty percent of the fault for the accident to Moore, and forty percent of the fault for the accident to Warner. Accordingly, the district court entered judgment in favor of Warner and against the Moores in the amount of $4,203.67.
Warner appeals. He contends the district court erred in excluding relevant evidence of his mental pain and suffering. He contends the court further erred in allowing the accident reconstructionist to offer an opinion on Warner's speed that was unsupported by the evidence and misled the jury.
II. Scope and Standards of Review.
We review this matter for the correction of errors at law. Iowa R. App. P. 6.4. Trial courts are granted broad discretion concerning the admissibility of evidence. Horak v. Argosy Gaming Co., 648 N.W.2d 137, 149 (Iowa 2002). Reversal of the court's evidentiary rulings is warranted only if the court clearly abused its discretion, to Warner's prejudice. Id. Discretion is abused when it is exercised to a clearly unreasonable extent, or for reasons or on grounds that are clearly untenable. Graber v. City of Ankeny, 616 N.W.2d 633, 638 (Iowa 2000).
III. Testimony Regarding the Effect of Financial Difficulties.
Warner contends the court erred when it excluded testimony that his financial difficulties had contributed to his mental pain and suffering, after concluding that "any testimony relating to . . . bad consequences that have followed from a lack of income, which is ultimately traceable under the Plaintiff's theory to a particular injury, . . . is ultimately a claim for economic or property loss type of damage. . . ." In so ruling the court clarified that Warner would be given a "very wide avenue" in developing testimony relevant to his claim for mental pain and suffering, but that if the testimony relates not to the injury itself, but to a claimed income loss from the injury, . . . the proper measure of damage for any income-loss related claim is, in fact, the income loss itself. And therefore, any claimed damages that arise from the claimed loss of income from the injury, the Court will not allow in this case.
Warner asserts the excluded testimony was relevant to establishing his mental pain and suffering, and that an award for lost income would not compensate him for any mental pain and suffering flowing from that loss of income. Upon a review of the record and relevant case law, we find no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision to exclude the testimony.
Iowa recognizes emotional distress as a proper element of damages when associated with a compensable physical injury. See Clark v. Estate of Rice, 653 N.W.2d 166, 170 (Iowa 2002). This type of emotional distress damage "has been described as `parasitic' damages because it is derived from the personal injury." Id. To establish the right to such damages, a plaintiff must show both that the defendant's conduct in fact caused the plaintiff's damage, and that "the policy of the law . . . require[s] the defendant to be legally responsible for them." Virden v. Betts and Beer Constr. Co., Inc., 656 N.W.2d 805, 808 (Iowa 2003).
[F]oreseeability is an important element in the establishment of causation. Damages for emotional distress which arise out of acts which invade an interest protected by tort law are recoverable only if the claimed emotional distress "naturally ensues from the acts complained of." We assign liability only for injuries "an ordinary person should reasonably foresee as the consequences of the negligent act."
Lawrence v. Grinde, 534 N.W.2d 414, 422 (Iowa 1995). "If upon looking back from the injury, the connection between the negligence and the injury appears unnatural, unreasonable, and improbable in the light of common experience, such negligence would be a remote rather than a proximate cause." Clinkscales v. Nelson Securities, Inc., 697 N.W.2d 836, 843 (Iowa 2005) (citation omitted).
Here, Warner does not seek to present evidence of mental pain and suffering that was a direct consequence of a physical injury. Rather, he asserts his physical injuries resulted in lost income, which forced him to take certain actions, which in turn caused him mental pain and suffering. Any mental pain and suffering arising from his lost income does not appear to be a natural, reasonably foreseeable, and probable consequence of the car accident and Warner's resulting physical injuries. As such, it would not be relevant to establishing Warner's claim of mental pain and suffering. See Iowa R. Evid. 5.401.
Moreover, we agree with the Moores that, even if the evidence was relevant, its probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice or confusion of the issues. See Iowa R. Evid. 5.403. Warner was not entitled to compensation for the remote and attenuated financial consequences of his lost income, or to any special consideration for his overall financial status. The excluded testimony, however, would create a danger that the jury's fault allocations or damage assessments would be improperly based upon or influenced by confusion regarding the compensability of Warner's financial difficulties or sympathy for Warner's financial plight.
Under such circumstances, we cannot conclude the district court's exclusion of the testimony was made on a clearly untenable basis. Moreover, even if the evidence should have been admitted, there is no evidence Warner was prejudiced by its exclusion. The alleged mental pain and suffering was claimed, by Warner himself, to result from a loss of income following the accident. However, the jury found that Warner had suffered no compensable loss of income. Accordingly, we find no prejudicial error in the court's exclusion of the evidence in question.
IV. Expert Opinion Testimony.
Warner also asserts the district court erroneously allowed the Moores' accident reconstructionist, Warren Beine, to testify to hypothetical calculations of Warner's speed at the time of the accident. Beine opined that, based upon various measurements and assumptions, Warner was traveling between forty-eight and sixty-eight miles per hour at the time of the accident. For the purpose of his calculations Beine assumed Moore had been accelerating at an average rate of speed for that particular intersection. Beine arrived at the forty-eight mile per hour figure by assuming the Cathcart vehicle was traveling twenty-fives miles per hour when it was passed by Warner. This estimate of Warner's speed was consistent with Cathcart's testimony that Warner was traveling between forty-five and fifty miles per hour when he "flew by" Cathcart's vehicle. When Beine reduced the presumed speed of the Cathcart vehicle to twenty miles per hour, his calculations indicated that Warner was traveling sixty-eight miles per hour.
These speeds are thirteen to thirty-three miles per hours above the legal and posted speed limit for the area where the accident occurred.
According to Beine he measured the acceleration of "at least 12 vehicles accelerating at that particular intersection from the stopping point to the approximate point of impact and timed them," and took the average. Beine believed this figure "would more accurately reflect what would look like a normal acceleration from that particular sign into that intersection versus what might be published as a general figure in a book."
Warner asserts there is no basis in the record to support the assumption the Cathcart vehicle was traveling at twenty-fives miles per hour, as Cathcart testified, both at trial and in his deposition, that he had been traveling between fifteen and twenty miles per hour. Warner also asserts the expert's opinion did not aid the jury in ascertaining the actual speed of his vehicle at the time of the accident, and in fact misled the jury, because the opinion demonstrated no more than the proposition that "a small change in speed in the Cathcart vehicle or Moore vehicle can cause a very large change in the speed of the Warner vehicle." We conclude neither contention has merit.
To the extent Warner makes additional challenges on appeal to the admission of the expert's opinion, it does not appear such challenges were raised before the district court. Accordingly, we do not address them on appeal. See Matter of Estate of Crabtree, 550 N.W.2d 168, 171 (Iowa 1996) (holding matters not raised before the district court are deemed waived).
Iowa is committed to a liberal rule on the admission of expert testimony. See Williams v. Hedican, 561 N.W.2d 817, 822 (Iowa 1997). To be admissible the expert testimony must assist the jury in understanding the evidence or aid the jury in resolving a disputed issue. See id. at 822-23; see also Iowa R. Evid. 5.702. In assessing the admissibility of such evidence, the "inquiry . . . is a flexible one that focuses solely on principles and methodology, and not on the conclusions they generate." Williams, 561 N.W.2d at 827. The expert may rely on otherwise inadmissible hearsay testimony, so long as the facts are "of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject. . . ." Iowa R. Evid. 5.703.
Although the evidence must be reliable,
[t]he amount of foundation necessary to establish reliability depend[s] on the evidence and the likely impact of the evidence on the fact finding process. . . . "[T]here is no requirement that the expert be able to express an opinion with absolute certainty: `[A]n expert's lack of absolute certainty goes to the weight of this testimony, not to its admissibility.'"
Williams, 561 N.W.2d at 823 (citations omitted).
In assessing Warner's foundational objection, we note Beine testified Cathcart had personally informed him he was traveling twenty-five miles per hour when he was passed by Warner. This forms a proper basis for Beine's opinion. See Iowa R. Evid. 5.703. Moreover, Warner has not shown that the principles and methodology underlying Beine's calculations are flawed or otherwise demonstrated the evidence was unreliable. Warner's complaints about the hypothetical or imprecise nature of Beine's opinion go to its weight, rather than its admissibility. The district court did not abuse it discretion in admitting this evidence.