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Sweet v. Roy4/26/2002
jury, see Powers v. Judd, 150 Vt. 290, 294, 553 A.2d 139, 141 (1988), we also defer to the judgment of the trial court which heard the evidence, see Greenmoss Builders, Inc. v. Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., 143 Vt. 66, 78, 461 A.2d 414, 420 (1983), overruled on other grounds by Lent v. Huntoon, 143 Vt. 539, 549, 470 A.2d 1162, 1170 (1983). Although a jury can award punitive damages only if it has awarded compensatory damages, we have no requirement that there be any particular ratio between the two awards. See Crump, 154 Vt. at 298, 576 A.2d at 449.
For the same reasons that the punitive damage award is not unconstitutional, it is also not manifestly and grossly excessive. The amount lies within the discretion of the jury.
IV.
Defendants raise two counterclaim errors: (1) Marcien and Mary Anne Roy were entitled to judgment for slander as a matter of law; and (2) the court erred in dismissing the ejectment count.
A.
The first of these issues arises from an amendment to defendants' counterclaims that they attempted to make before the start of the evidence on the first day of trial. The court denied it at that time, but allowed it at the close of the evidence. The motion was made orally, and the amendment was never reduced to writing. In essence, the charge to the jury became the only description of the slander counterclaim. It stated: "Defendants have made a counterclaim that Jodi Sweet falsely accused them in public, of criminal conduct by stating that she believed they were responsible for the acts of vandalism at her mobile home." The claim is based on plaintiff's testimony that she stated to the police, co-workers and others that she thought the Roys were responsible for the vandalism.
The charge to the jury itemized four elements of the tort, including that plaintiff's statements were false and that plaintiff made them "without exercising the care a reasonable person would have in determining whether they were true or false." It reiterated that truth is an absolute defense to slander.
The essence of the claims of Marcien and Mary Anne Roy is that since they were exonerated from direct participation in the self-help eviction, they were entitled to recover even though the jury found that Leon committed the acts alleged and the court found that the trust, as park owner, was vicariously responsible for them.
A major difficulty with defendants' argument is that they did not show the allegedly defamatory statements with any specificity and never, prior to their post-trial motion, tried to differentiate among the members of the Roy family. Although they raised an issue in the motion, they adopted a different theory from that raised here. They argued that the jury was never instructed to consider the slander claim in light of the fact that it found that Marcien Roy did not personally commit the vandalism and claimed "Marcien Roy is entitled to consideration by the jury of his claim against plaintiff for slander." We assume they did not continue with that theory because they never objected to the jury instructions.
Even if defendants have preserved their claim, we conclude that they have not shown reversible error. If they believed, as they currently argue, that plaintiff's statements were defamatory as a matter of law, they were obligated to obtain a ruling to that effect at the close of the evidence. Instead, the issue was submitted to the jury "because the connotation of the . . . spoken words was ambiguous." Lent v. Huntoon, 143 Vt. 539, 547, 470 A.2d 1162, 1168 (1983). While defendants proved that plaintiff made statements, they provided only sketchy evidence of the content of the statements. The jury
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