The San Antonio Court of Appeals has conditionally granted a defendant’s petition for writ of mandamus against a Karnes County trial court that granted a prevailing plaintiff a new trial, presumably because the jury did not award enough damages.
In re Spotted Lakes, LLC d/b/a 1845 Oil Field Services (No. 04-23-00815-CV; February 7, 2024) stemmed from a vehicle collision between Plaintiff and a Spotted Lakes vehicle. Plaintiff sued Spotted Lakes, alleging negligence. During pre-trial proceedings, Spotted Lakes designated two orthopedic surgeons to testify on Plaintiff’s back and shoulder injuries and a vocation expert to speak to Plaintiff’s occupational abilities before and after the colllision. Plaintiff moved to strike the medical experts, but prior to a hearing on the motion Plaintiff agreed to drop his claims related to a shoulder injury in return for Defendant’s agreement to call only one of its expert surgeons at trial. Defendant duly de-designated one of the experts. Pursuant to the docket control order, the parties subsequently designated deposition excerpts for trial use 30 days before trial. Plaintiff designated excerpts from the designated surgeon’s deposition but not from the vocational expert’s deposition.
During his case-in-chief, Plaintiff sought to introduce parts of the defense’s de-designated surgeon’s deposition, as well as excerpts from the defense vocational expert’s deposition. Defendant objected to the former because the parties had agreed to de-designate him and to the latter because Plaintiff failed to notice the excerpts in accordance with the docket control order. The trial court granted the objections but informed Plaintiff that he could offer the evidence again during rebuttal and make a bill of exceptions at the appropriate time. In the event, Plaintiff did neither. The jury returned an $88,500 award for medical expenses, past physical pain and mental anguish, and lost wages but awarded nothing for future loss of earning capacity, future medical expenses, disigurement, or physical impairment (Plaintiff claimed that because of his injuries he could not find another $100,000 per year job like the one he had in the oil field). Plaintiff filed a motion for new trial based on the trial court’s ruling on the defense objection to portions of the defense experts’ testimony. The trial court (with a different judge presiding) granted the motion. Defendant sought mandamus relief.
In an opinion by Justice Valenzuela, the court of appeals conditionally granted mandamus. Although under TRCP Rule 320 a trial court has broad discretion to grant a new trial, it must nevertheless only do so for “(1) [] a reason for which a new trial is legally appropriate (such as a well-defined legal standard or a defect that probably resulted in an improper verdict; and (2) [which] is specific enough to indicate that the trial court did not simply parrot a pro forma template, but rather derived the articulated reasons from the particular facts and circumstances of the case at hand” (citations omitted). A trial court exceeds its discretion if, for example, its new trial order “specific or not, is not one for which a new trial is legally valid,” “provides little or no insight into the judge’s reasoning,” goes against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence, “fails to indicate the trial court considered the specific facts and circumstances of the case at hand,” or “fails to explain how the evidence (or lack of evidence) undermines the jury’s findings” (citation omitted). If the order is valid on its face, the court of appeals may then conduct a merits review “and grant mandamus relief if the record does not support the trial court’s rationale for ordering a new trial” (citation omitted).
Here the court concluded that the trial court’s order was insufficient on its face “because it failed to explain how the lack of [the defense experts’] evidence undermined the jury verdict.” The order, which stated only that the trial court abused its discretion in denying Plaintiff the opportunity to introduce the evidence, provided no explanation of the order, much less “‘an understandable, reasonably specific explanation’ for setting aside the jury’s verdict and granting [Plaintiff’s] motion for new trial” (citations omitted). Second, the order failed to show a legally valid basis because, although the trial court informed Plaintiff of the opportunity to offer the evidence again on rebuttal, Plaintiff didn’t do it. Moreover, Plaintiff sought to introduce the evidence to rebut defense counsel’s argument, which itself is not evidence, instead of evidence offered by the defense. This, too, constituted an invalid basis for the new trial order.
This case is another excellent example of an intermediate court of appeals doing its job the way it’s supposed to be done. Here the court turned back an effort to reopen a plaintiff’s verdict that the plaintiff thought was too low without so much as stating a plausible reason, the upshot of which was to let plaintiff off the hook for failing to offer rebuttal evidence when he had the chance.
