Crossgrove v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

280 P.3d 29, 2010 WL 2521744, 2010 Colo. App. LEXIS 851
CourtColorado Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 24, 2010
DocketNo. 09CA0689
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 280 P.3d 29 (Crossgrove v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Colorado Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Crossgrove v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 280 P.3d 29, 2010 WL 2521744, 2010 Colo. App. LEXIS 851 (Colo. Ct. App. 2010).

Opinion

Opinion by

Judge ROMAN.

In this personal injury case, plaintiff, Larry Crossgrove, appeals the judgment for damages entered on a jury verdict against defendant, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. We conclude the trial court erroneously admitted collateral source evidence; therefore, we vacate the judgment as to damages and remand for a new trial on damages.

I. Background

Crossgrove was struck on the head by a manually operated overhead garage door while delivering cookies to a Wal-Mart store. Based on a negligence theory, he sued Wal-Mart for injuries, claiming in pertinent part over $240,000 in billed medical expenses.

Crossgrove filed a motion in limine seeking to prevent Wal-Mart from introducing evidence of payments to his medical providers by third parties. Wal-Mart sought to introduce evidence that the providers accepted $40,000 in full satisfaction of the bills.

The trial court denied Crossgrove's motion, concluding that the amount paid was admissible as evidence of the reasonable value of the services. In light of this ruling, the parties stipulated as follows: "The parties have stipulated that $40,000 was accepted by the health care providers in full payment of all of the medical bills by the plaintiff in this action."

[31]*31Nevertheless, Crossgrove also testified to the full amount ($242,298.86) billed by his providers and asked the jury to award him economic damages amounting to over $340,000, including the fully billed amount of medical expenses as well as lost income of $101,520.1

The jury was charged with determining whether Wal-Mart had been negligent and, if so, whether that negligence caused any injuries to Crossgrove. In that regard, the jury was instructed to determine the extent, if any, of Crossgrove's fault for the claimed injuries, and to determine the amount of damages suffered by Crossgrove in three separate categories: economic, noneconomic, and physical impairment or disfigurement.

In assessing the amount of economic losses, the jury was instructed it could consider past and future losses, including loss of earnings and "reasonable and necessary medical, hospital, and other expenses."

The jury returned a verdict for Cross-grove, awarding him a total of $50,000 for economic losses and an additional $27,375 in noneconomic damages. The jury also determined Crossgrove was 20% at fault.

In post-trial motions, Wal-Mart moved the trial court to reduce the amount of the award, under section 13-21-111.6, C.R.S. 2009, by $40,000 for payments it asserted had been made by third parties to the medical providers. Crossgrove moved for a new trial, citing the court's admission into evidence of the amount paid in satisfaction of the medical bills.

The trial court denied Crossgrove's motion for a new trial and granted Wal-Mart's motion to reduce the amount of the award. After reducing the jury's total award of $77,875 by 20% for Crossgrove's attributed fault and $40,000 for payments made by third parties, the trial court entered judgment for Crossgrove in the amount of $21,900, plus interest. This appeal followed.

II. Standard of Review

Evidentiary rulings are reviewed for an abuse of discretion. Antolovich v. Brown Group Retail, Inc., 183 P.3d 582, 595 (Colo.App.2007). A district court abuses its discretion if it bases its ruling on an erroneous view of the law. People v. Wadle, 97 P.3d 932, 936 (Colo.2004) (citing Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 405, 110 S.Ct. 2447, 110 L.Ed.2d 359 (1990)).

III. Collateral Source Evidence

We are asked to decide whether the collateral source rule prohibited Wal-Mart from submitting to the jury evidence of the discounted amount paid by third parties to satisfy Crossgrove's medical bills. We begin our analysis with a review of the history of the collateral source rule in Colorado.

A. Common Law Collateral Source Rule

At common law, compensation or indemnity received by an injured party from a collateral source, wholly independent of the wrongdoer and to which the wrongdoer has not contributed, would not diminish the damages otherwise recoverable from the wrongdoer. Colorado Permanente Medical Group, P.C. v. Evans, 926 P.2d 1218, 1230 (Colo.1996) (citing Kistler v. Halsey, 173 Colo. 540, 545, 481 P.2d 722, 724 (1971)).

Accordingly, in Colorado,
the common law did not require setoffs against damage awards. Rather, plaintiffs were allowed to recover the full damages awarded against defendants even though the plaintiffs also received compensation from collateral sources....
The purpose of the collateral source rule was to prevent the defendant from receiving credit for such compensation and thereby reduce the amount payable as damages to the injured party. To the extent that either party received a windfall, it was considered more just that the benefit be realized by the plaintiff in the form of double recovery than by the tort-feasor in the form of reduced liability.

[32]*32Van Waters & Rogers, Inc. v. Keelon, 840 P.2d 1070, 1074 (Colo.1992). Thus, the common law collateral source rule has been de-seribed as an "established exception to the general rule that damages in negligence actions must be compensatory." Wills v. Foster, 229 Ill.2d 393, 323 Ill.Dec. 26, 892 N.E.2d 1018, 1022 (2008) (quoting 25 C.J.S. Damages § 172 (2002)).

To achieve this substantive purpose, the common law collateral source rule barred evidence regarding benefits a plaintiff obtained from sources collateral to the tortfea-sor. See Carr v. Boyd, 123 Colo. 350, 356-57, 229 P.2d 659, 662-63 (1951) ("Benefits received by the plaintiff from a source other than the defendant and to which he has not contributed are not to be considered in assessing the damages." (quoting 15 Am. Jur. 617)); see also Moyer v. Merrick, 155 Colo. 73, 77-80, 392 P.2d 653, 655-57 (1964).

Part of the rationale for the evidentiary prohibition was that "jurors might be led by the irrelevancy to consider plaintiffs' claims unimportant or trivial or to refuse plaintiffs' verdicts or reduce them, believing that otherwise there would be unjust double recovery." Scott v. Garfield, 454 Mass. 790, 912 N.E.2d 1000, 1009 (2009) (quoting Corsetti v. Stone Co., 396 Mass. 1, 483 N.E.2d 793 (1985)); see also Carr v. Boyd, 123 Colo. at 357, 229 P.2d at 663-64 ("[the confusion that could easily arise in the minds of the jurors" as a result of the irrelevant collateral source evidence "may have affected the verdict").

B. Admissibility of Discounted Collateral Source Payments Under Common Law Collateral Source Rule

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
280 P.3d 29, 2010 WL 2521744, 2010 Colo. App. LEXIS 851, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/crossgrove-v-wal-mart-stores-inc-coloctapp-2010.