The case of Gregory v. Chohan arose out of a tragic highway accident that resulted in a multi-car pileup and four deaths.[1] On November 23, 2013, Sarah Gregory was driving a New Prime eighteen-wheeler on Interstate 40. It was late in the night, and the road was icy. When Gregory spotted brake lights ahead, she applied the brakes on her vehicle, lost control, and jackknifed. After two vehicles managed to avoid Gregory’s New Prime truck that now spanned several lanes, an ATG Transportation truck—in an effort to avoid the New Prime truck—turned onto its side after veering towards the shoulder. After the ATG truck crashed, there were few, if any, routes to avoid contact with either the New Prime truck or the ATG truck. Several vehicles crashed into the stopped trucks at varying speeds.

Bhupinder Deol was driving one of those vehicles. Deol, after crashing, eventually left his vehicle to assist victims of the accident. While doing so, he was struck by a vehicle and killed. Deol’s estate and family sued Gregory, New Prime, and others for compensatory damages in a wrongful death action. The jury awarded nearly $39 million to the plaintiffs. The Deol family’s share was around $30 million, about half of which were noneconomic damages.

Gregory and New Prime appealed. The en banc court of appeals affirmed. Before the Texas Supreme Court, Gregory and New Prime raised three issues: “(1) the court of appeals reviewed the amount of the noneconomic damages award under an overly deferential standard of review, (2) the amount of the award finds no support in the evidence, and (3) ATG should have been designated as a responsible third party.”[2]

The Texas Supreme Court, in a 6-0 judgment, reversed the court of appeals and remanded to the trial court for a new trial. Justice Jimmy Blacklock delivered the judgment and the plurality opinion, in which Chief Justice Nathan Hecht and Justice Brett Busby joined in full, and in which Justice Jane Bland joined in part. Justice John Devine wrote an opinion concurring in judgment in which Justice Jeff Boyd joined. Justice Debra Lehrmann, Justice Rebeca Huddle, and Justice Evan Young did not participate in the decision.[3]

First, after surveying its case law,[4] the Texas Supreme Court held that the court of appeals used the wrong standard in assessing whether the noneconomic damages were appropriate. Rejecting the lower court’s contention that wrongful death actions have a distinct standard for mental anguish damages because “death is different,” the court held that a jury must “find an amount that, in the standard language of the jury charge, would fairly and reasonably compensate for the loss.”[5] The jury “cannot simply pick a number and put it in the blank.”[6] Actually calculating this number, however, is difficult to do in practice.[7] The court, while acknowledging the difficulty in putting a number on the price of grief from the loss of a loved one, “insist[ed] that every aspect of our legal system—including the way we compensate grieving families . . .—yields rational and non-arbitrary results based on evidence and reason, to the extent possible.”[8] To that end, the court held that in all cases, even wrongful death actions, “there must be evidence to justify the amount awarded.”[9]

In so holding, the court rejected plaintiffs’ counsel’s approach to noneconomic damages. Instead of tying the amount to the grief, pain, and suffering of the Deol family, counsel used two impermissible tactics. The court rejected counsel’s “unsubstantiated anchoring,” that is, analogizing the value of human life to an expensive object like a fighter jet or a Mark Rothko painting.[10] The court also rejected counsel’s attempt to, in essence, “suggest that New Prime can afford a large award and that it should be punished.”[11] The court instructed that “mental anguish damages generally must establish the ‘nature, duration, and severity’ of the anguish suffered” while being careful to note that “precise quantification” is not required.[12] Functionally, the court endorsed a constitutional law rational basis test for this analysis.[13] In short, “[i]f the amount sought is genuinely thought to be reasonable and just compensation, then there should be an articulable reason why that is so.”[14]

Second, the court determined that there was evidence the Deol family had suffered mental anguish and loss of companionship.[15] However, the court rejected the amount of damages because there was no evidence to justify the amount awarded.[16] The court also rejected the court of appeals’ “shock the conscience” test.[17] Such a test is “inherently subjective” and impermissible.[18] Here, the Deol family did not put forth evidence demonstrating the extent of their damages.[19]

Third, the court found that the trial court erred in excluding ATG as a responsible third party.[20] Reviewing de novo, the Texas Supreme Court found there was “evidence of the ATG driver’s role in bringing about the dangerous conditions that caused the deadly collision” such that “a reasonable jury [could] assign partial responsibility to ATG for Deol’s death.”[21] Before the ATG truck crashed, the court reasoned, two vehicles were able to maneuver around the New Prime truck; however, the crashed ATG truck removed all potential escape routes on the road. Since, “a reasonable jury could have concluded that the ATG driver negligently operated his vehicle, either by driving too fast . . . or by overcorrecting his vehicle,” there was a genuine issue of material fact as to ATG’s responsibility.[22] The court rejected ATG’s causation argument because “a reasonable jury could have concluded that the ATG driver’s actions turned an already dangerous situation into a deadlier one by closing the ability of drivers approaching the scene to avoid a crash.”[23]

Justice Devine, joined by Justice Boyd, concurred only as to the new trial, which he thought was necessary due to defense counsels’ improper damages argument.[24] Justice Devine disagreed with the plurality’s standard, arguing that “the plurality conspicuously refuses to say . . . what evidence would ever suffice [to demonstrate noneconomic damages in wrongful death actions].”[25] In Justice Devine’s eyes, “[p]ain and anguish are not difficult to monetize due to the impossibility of any exact evaluation; they are easy to monetize but impossible to objectively quantify.”[26] In short, “nonpecuniary losses have no pecuniary measure.”[27] Justice Devine additionally argued that the legislature is better equipped than the court to modify the standard for noneconomic damages.[28] He would entrust the question of noneconomic damages to juries instead of implementing the plurality’s robust evidentiary standard that is impossible to satisfy. Here, Justice Devine would not have set a new standard because a new trial was necessary for other reasons.[29]

Justice Bland concurred only as to the new trial also because of defense counsels’ improper damages argument. Instead of wholly rejecting the plurality’s standard, as Justice Devine would do, Justice Bland would “instead . . . leave further development of the law to a case in which the jury is properly informed about what to consider and, importantly, not told to apply measurements wholly outside the mental anguish evidence presented.”[30] “For now, it is enough to say that the mental anguish verdict in this case is legally infirm.”[31]

[1] Gregory v. Chohan, 670 S.W.3d 546 (Tex. 2023).

[2] Id. at 553.

[3] Id. at 568.

[4] Id. at 553–55 (collecting cases).

[5] Id. at 555 (cleaned up).

[6] Id. (citing Bentley v. Bunton, 94 S.W.3d 561, 606 (Tex. 2002)).

[7] Id. at 556 (“The unavoidable truth is that money cannot genuinely compensate for emotional trauma, whether or not tort law claims otherwise. Money’s inability to truly compensate for mental anguish is most starkly demonstrated in a wrongful death case.”).

[8] Id. at 557.

[9] Id. (cleaned up).

[10] Id. at 557–58.

[11] Id. at 558.

[12] Id. at 560 (quoting Service Corp. Intern. v. Guerra, 348 S.W.3d 221, 231 (Tex. 2011)).

[13] Id. at 561 (citing Sheffield Dev. Co. v. City of Glenn Heights, 140 S.W.3d 660, 675 (Tex. 2004)).

[14] Id. at 561–62.

[15] Id. at 563.

[16] Id. at 563–64.

[17] Id. at 564.

[18] Id.

[19] Id. at 563 (“While we agree with both the [lower court] that [Deol’s wife’s] testimony is sufficient evidence that Deol’s family suffered compensable mental anguish and a loss of companionship, the testimony is no evidence, standing on its own, of the amount of damages incurred on account of that suffering. Crucially, plaintiffs’ counsel at no point in these proceedings has attempted to proffer a rational argument justifying either the amount sought or the amount awarded.”).

[20] Id.

[21] Id. at 566.

[22] Id.

[23] Id. at 567–68.

[24] Id. at 577.

[25] Id. at 570.

[26] Id. (cleaned up).

[27] Id. at 571.

[28] Id. at 574–75.

[29] Id. at 575.

[30] Id. at 576.

[31] Id.

 

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