In a recent New Jersey appellate decision, the court addressed an interesting intersection of personal injury law, workers' compensation and jury verdict interpretation.

Jon L. Gelman

The case, Todd v. Bauder, highlights the importance of precise jury instructions and the limits of judicial authority to modify jury awards.

The case arose from a 2013 altercation between Jeffrey Todd, a Holmdel police officer, and William Bauder during a traffic stop. Todd claimed he suffered various injuries, including an aggravation of his preexisting Meniere's disease (a condition causing vertigo and hearing issues), when Bauder allegedly became confrontational and resisted arrest.

At trial, the jury awarded Todd $25,000 in damages, reduced to $21,500 after accounting for comparative negligence. However, an interesting legal issue emerged post-trial when Todd attempted to have the court "mold" the verdict to include a substantial workers' compensation lien.

The appellate court's decision offers several important lessons.

First, the court emphasized that judges cannot speculate about jury intentions. While Todd argued that any damage award implied that the jury found causation between the incident and his Meniere's disease aggravation, the court disagreed. Since Todd suffered multiple injuries during the altercation (including to his elbow and knee), the jury's award could have been based on these other injuries rather than the Meniere's disease aggravation.

Second, the court highlighted a critical procedural misstep: the failure to request a special interrogatory. If Todd wanted to ensure that the jury specifically addressed whether the incident aggravated his Meniere's disease, he should have requested a specific jury question on this issue. As the party bearing the burden of proof, this responsibility fell squarely on his shoulders.

Third, the decision underscores the importance of clear pretrial agreements. While there was apparently some agreement between the parties about molding the verdict to include workers' compensation expenses, it was contingent on the jury finding causation between the incident and the Meniere's disease aggravation — a finding that couldn't be definitively determined from the general verdict.

The case serves as a reminder to trial attorneys about the importance of careful jury instruction planning. Had Todd's counsel requested a special interrogatory specifically addressing Meniere's disease aggravation, the outcome might have been different. Instead, the attempt to inflate a $25,000 verdict with workers' compensation liens failed because the court refused to speculate about the jury's reasoning.

This decision reinforces the fundamental principle that courts must respect jury verdicts as they are rendered and cannot retrofit them to match what parties believe the jury might have intended. It's a stark reminder for practitioners that critical issues must be explicitly presented to the jury through proper interrogatories rather than leaving them to post-trial interpretation.

Claimants' attorney Jon L. Gelman is the author of "New Jersey Workers’ Compensation Law" and co-author of the national treatise "Modern Workers’ Compensation Law." He is based in Wayne, New Jersey. This blog post is republished with permission.