Injury and death apparently aren't worth as much in Utah as they are in other states.
Jury awards for death and injury in the Beehive State are running 6.5 percent below the national average - the sharpest disparity since researchers began tracking awards seven years ago.Jury awards in most of Utah's rural counties are 13.4 percent below the national average, according to the 1991 Utah Verdict Survey conducted by Jury Verdict Research Inc., an Ohio company.
The company's October publication reviewed Utah jury awards for the latter half of 1989, all of 1990 and the first half of 1991, said Dwight E. Edmond, author of the publication.
The survey noted that Utah ranks 43rd in the nation for jury awards in excess of $1 million. However, it also reported that 34 percent of Utah jury awards were for more than $100,000. That figure is up from 30 percent in the 1990 report.
Utah juries are not only more conservative in the size of their awards, they are also more reluctant to give out awards at all. Utahns seeking cash for an injury or death have a 55 percent chance of winning in court compared to a 63 percent chance nationally, the report said.
In Utah, the median jury award for a death is $150,000. The median award for disk damage is $100,000, but other back and neck injuries pull down an average of only $11,857.From mid-1989 to mid-1991, Utah juries awarded a high of $8 million in one case and a low of $1 in several others.
The report also contained sketches of several Utah cases. A Utah artist who earned about $7,000 a year committed suicide in Castleview Hospital's psychiatric ward during a 50-minute span in which doctors and nurses at the hospital left him unattended.
The dead man's family sued the hospital for not watching him more closely. A jury awarded the family $540,000 - more than the man would earn in two lifetimes based on his annual income when he died.
In addition, the family won an undisclosed amount from one of the man's doctors.
The case histories underscore the capricious nature of trial law. One woman received $16,500 for a shoulder injury she suffered when she slipped and fell on some water and leaves accumulated in the doorway of a Smith's Food King.
But another woman who suffered a shoulder and elbow injury when she slipped and fell in a Maverik Country Store was awarded $100,500 for her pain.
A Salt Lake business owner demanded that Salt Lake City pay him $12,000 for alleged police brutality. The man sustained a severed nerve and a crushed artery in his shoulder after a Salt Lake police officer used excessive force to subdue him, the report said.
The city thought the man's injury was worth only $6,000 and that was all it offered to pay him. A jury saw things differently. It awarded the man $150,000 for his injuries. After the verdict came in, the city settled with the man for an undisclosed amount, the report said.
A Mantua woman won a $1.2 million jury award after her 27-year-old husband was crushed to death under a 30-ton stack of steel at Nucor.