- Court
- Court of Appeals of Georgia
- Year
- 2024
- Case
- Lawhorne v. Douglas
- Citation
- 371 Ga. App. 849; 903 S.E.2d 316; 2024 Ga. App. LEXIS 230; 2024 WL 3021315
- Decided
- June 17, 2024
A trial court has discretion to give an anti-collateral source jury instruction to prevent jurors from considering insurance or other benefits when deciding liability and damages, even absent formal admission of insurance evidence, when improper circumstances—such as a juror's comment about insurance or testimony regarding collateral benefits—create a risk of contaminating the jury's deliberations.
Summary
The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed a $4.5 million jury verdict in favor of Amy E. Douglas in a medical malpractice action against Thomas Lawhorne III and Optim Orthopedics, LLC. The trial court instructed jurors to disregard insurance and other benefits when deciding liability and damages. Lawhorne appealed, arguing the instruction was improper because no insurance evidence had been admitted at trial. The appellate court held that the trial court properly exercised its discretion to give the anti-collateral source instruction based on circumstances that arose during voir dire and testimony.
Issues Decided
Whether the Trial Court Properly Gave an Anti-Collateral Source Jury Instruction Without Formal Admission of Insurance Evidence
Decision
The trial court did not err in giving the anti-collateral source instruction. The court has discretion to give a cautionary instruction to prevent collateral source issues from contaminating jury deliberations, not only when improper evidence is admitted but also when any improper circumstance is injected into the case. The instruction was supported by both a potential juror’s comment during voir dire and testimony about disability benefits, either of which provided a sufficient basis for the instruction.
Facts
Douglas sued Lawhorne for allegedly improperly implanting a spinal cord stimulator. During voir dire, when asked whether potential jurors had compunction about awarding monetary damages if evidence supported an award, one potential juror stated that he had worked in the insurance and reinsurance industry with medical malpractice insurance books, and that he sometimes had a bias when people said awarding large damages “doesn’t hurt anybody” because “it comes from the insurance company.” Neither party objected to this comment at the time.
During trial, Douglas’s pain management doctor testified in a video-recorded deposition that at one appointment they discussed “helping her with any disability issue” and that his office had completed disability papers for her. On cross-examination, Lawhorne’s counsel asked the doctor about the disability papers, and the doctor explained that he helps patients obtain disability as a “temporizing measure” if pain is severe enough, or to maintain existing disability status, or to help evaluate whether someone might need disability. The doctor also testified that he orders functional capacity examinations to obtain objective data about disability.
At the charge conference, the trial court informed counsel it would give an “anti-collateral source charge.” Lawhorne’s counsel objected, arguing the charge was not based on evidence presented and would cause jurors to think about insurance. The court denied the objection and gave the instruction, which told jurors that “the presence or absence of any insurance or other benefits of any type” for either party, as well as financial circumstances, “shall not be considered by you in deciding the issue of liability or damages” and “shall not enter into your discussions or deliberations in any way.” The jury returned a verdict for Douglas in the amount of $4.5 million.
Reasoning
Georgia law permits a trial court to give a cautionary instruction to eradicate the adverse effect of placing collateral source issues before the jury, and the determination of whether such an instruction is warranted rests in the trial court’s discretion. The court may give such an instruction not only because of improper evidence but also if “any improper circumstance was injected into the case.”
The potential juror’s comment during voir dire squarely placed the issue of medical malpractice insurance before other potential jurors, creating an improper circumstance that supported the instruction. Although the doctor’s testimony about “disability” might have referred to government benefits, private disability insurance, or other financial assistance, the testimony was ambiguous and related to Douglas’s efforts to obtain some kind of financial benefit. This testimony supported instructing the jury to disregard “the presence or absence of any insurance or other benefits of any type.”
Although the testimony about disability benefits concerned events before the surgery at issue and thus might not have directly violated the collateral source rule, it was within the trial court’s discretion to give a cautionary instruction because of the testimony’s likelihood to interject the issue of third-party payments or other irrelevant matters to the jury.
The timing of the instruction—at the end of trial rather than contemporaneously with the juror’s comment or the doctor’s testimony—did not constitute an abuse of discretion because no party contemporaneously objected to or requested an instruction at the time those statements were made. A trial court does not err by giving a curative instruction in its closing jury charge rather than contemporaneously with improper testimony when there was no request for such an instruction at the time.
The instruction’s content did not improperly connect insurance to liability for the first time during trial. Collateral source evidence is inherently prejudicial because its infectious nature tends to contaminate the entire trial, affecting not only damages but also the issues of injury and liability. The instruction was designed to prevent this contamination.
Finally, even if the trial court’s reason for giving the instruction was to preempt jury questions about insurance rather than to respond to specific circumstances, the appellate court affirmed under the “right for any reason” rule, which permits affirmance of a trial court’s decision if it is correct for any reason, regardless of the trial court’s stated reasoning.
Commentary
For plaintiff lawyers, this decision clarifies that an anti-collateral source instruction need not await formal admission of insurance evidence; a stray juror comment during voir dire or ambiguous testimony about financial benefits can trigger the trial court’s discretion to give the instruction. The practical significance lies in the court’s recognition that collateral source contamination can occur through informal channels—here, a juror’s unprompted remark about insurance paying malpractice awards—and that trial courts have broad discretion to preempt that risk even when no party requests an instruction at the moment the improper circumstance arises. Plaintiff counsel should be alert to such comments during voir dire and consider whether to flag them for the record, since the absence of a contemporaneous objection or request did not prevent the instruction here and may affect appellate review of timing arguments.
The opinion also signals that testimony about collateral benefits—even if temporally or factually remote from the injury at issue—can support a cautionary instruction if it creates a “likelihood to interject the issue of third-party payments or other irrelevant matters to the jury.” This broad discretionary standard means that plaintiff lawyers cannot assume that pre-injury disability discussions or references to financial assistance will escape judicial notice or curative instruction, and careful examination of deposition testimony and witness statements for any mention of benefits or financial support may be warranted during trial preparation.
