Drust

Personal injury action. Defendant Chester Drust appeals from a judgment rendered pursuant to a jury verdict awarding plaintiff Gregory Drust $1,436,000 in damages for injuries sustained as the result of defendant’s negligent operation of an automobile in which plaintiff was a passenger. On appeal, defendant claims prejudicial error from the trial court’s refusal to instruct on plaintiff’s contributory negligence. He also contends that “substantial portions of the damage award were unsupported by evidence.” We affirm the finding and judgment on liability but reverse that part of the judgment pertaining to damages.

Facts:

At approximately 1 p.m. on March 14, 1973, defendant was driving his 18-year-old son (plaintiff) to class at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where plaintiff was a freshman. Defendant was driving 50 miles per hour on westbound Ward Memorial Boulevard, which leads directly to the university campus and which, up to the Sandspit overpass, is a divided highway with two lanes in each direction. A car driven by Maria Sanchez, a university employee, entered the highway at the Sandspit Road onramp and safely pulled in front of defendant’s car. With…

I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion which reverses the damage award in favor of plaintiff.

My disagreement with the majority stems not from any belief on my part that the jury’s arithmetic was correct or that the damages were not excessive but from the fact that the declarations of the jurors, which the majority uses to uncover the error, are clearly incompetent as evidence upon which to impeach the verdict.

I start with the prosposition that the use of juror affidavits in connection with motions for new trial has reached epidemic proportions and should be discouraged wherever possible. It should be a very rare occasion, indeed, where the declarations of jurors, given after a trial, concerning what went on during jury deliberations should be used as a basis for upsetting the verdict which was returned.

In my opinion, Krouse v. Graham (1977) 19 Cal.3d 58 [ 137 Cal.Rptr. 863 , 562 P.2d 1022 ], upon which the majority relies, was wrongly decided and I do not hesitate to suggest that the Supreme Court should rethink the rationale of that case.

No amount of semantics or legal legerdemain can convert a jury’s mathematical computations from a “mental process” to an…

Personal injury action. Defendant Chester Drust appeals from a judgment rendered pursuant to a jury verdict awarding plaintiff Gregory Drust $1,436,000 in damages for injuries sustained as the result of defendant's negligent operation of an automobile in which plaintiff was a passenger. On appeal, defendant claims prejudicial error from the trial court's refusal to instruct on plaintiff's contributory negligence. He also contends that "substantial portions of the damage award were unsupported by evidence." We affirm the finding and judgment on liability but reverse that part of the judgment pertaining to damages.

At approximately 1 p.m. on March 14, 1973, defendant was driving his 18-year-old son (plaintiff) to class at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where plaintiff was a freshman. Defendant was driving 50 miles per hour on westbound Ward Memorial Boulevard, which leads directly to the university campus and which, up to the Sandspit overpass, is a divided highway with two lanes in each direction. A car driven by Maria Sanchez, a university employee, entered the highway at the Sandspit Road onramp and safely pulled in front of defendant's car.…