The Plaintiff John Lakin and Marie Lakin filed a case against SENCO PRODUCTS, INC., an Ohio corporation. They are seeking for economic, noneconomic, and punitive damages for personal injury and loss of consortium arising out of accusation of negligent failure to warn and strict products liability of the design and manufacture of the SN325 pneumatic nail gun. Senco profes, inter alia, that ORS 18.560(1)1 limited any noneconomic damage award to $500,000. But the jury’s verdict find Senco liable both in strict liability and in negligence, and fixing John Lakin's parallel fault at five percent. The jury awarded John Lakin $3,323,413 in economic damages and $2,000,000 in noneconomic damages, then Ann Marie Lakin got $876,000 in noneconomic damages …show more content…
The Defendant Senco manufactures pneumatic nail guns that includes SN325, that shoot 3.25 inch nails. During 1990, plaintiff John Lakin used an SN325 gun to nail a piece of wood. He was standing on his toes on a makeshift sawhorse platform, Lakin raised the wood and the SN325 over his head, pressed the firing end of the SN325 against the wood, and hit the trigger. But instead of discharging only a single nail, the SN325 immediately thereafter another nail, that hit some part of the first nail, That cause SN325 to backfire into Lakin's face. The SN325 then discharged a third nail, which enter Lakin's brain. Because of his injuries, parts of Lakin's brain had to be surgically removed and because of that He now suffers from decline his mental and emotional capacities, his left arm and leg are paralyzed, he has experienced a profound personality change, and he cannot live independently. As noted, the jury awarded both plaintiffs noneconomic damages more than the limits provided by ORS 18.560(1). The trial court reduced the jury's awards per formula that the trial court thought to be required by that …show more content…
Following our independent review of the record and for the reasons cogently explained [987 P.2d 476]
In Oberg, 320 Or. at 549, 888 P.2d 8, this court stated:
[T]he standard for post-verdict judicial review of an award of punitive damages is as follows: A jury's award of punitive damages shall not be disturbed when it is within the range that a rational juror would be entitled to award in the light of the record as a whole; the range that a rational juror would be entitled to award depends, in turn, on the statutory and common law factors that allow an award of punitive damages for the specific kind of claim at issue.14
The Court of Appeals' opinion, Lakin, 144 Or.App. at 67-74, 925 P.2d 107, conclude that the trial court did not misscalculate in denying defendant's motions for a directed verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the issue of entitlement to punitive damages. We hold that on this record a rational juror would be entitled to award some amount of punitive