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In ExxonMobil Corp. v. Brown, the Fourteenth Court of Appeals has continued appellate-court efforts to define the contours of proving and evaluating non-economic damages in Texas. Non-economic damages refer to compensation for losses like mental anguish, pain and suffering, loss of companionship, etc. The Brown opinion follows the Supreme Court of Texas's 2023 decision in Gregory v. Chohan.1 Despite the split in Chohan within the Court, the Court made clear that non-economic damages require "a rational basis grounded in evidence" and "[j]uries cannot simply pick a number and put it in the blank."
In Brown, the Fourteenth Court applied Chohan's standard and discussed guardrails on non-economic damages. As discussed below, plaintiffs must provide the jury with an evidentiary basis for the amount of non-economic damages, and multi-million-dollar non-economic damages awards—that well exceed other cases with similar (or more severe) injuries—will not withstand appellate scrutiny.
Case Background and Procedural History
Brown is one of a number of cases arising from a 2019 incident involving a series of explosions and fires at ExxonMobil's Baytown Olefins Plant. This particular appeal to the Fourteenth Court followed a jury trial featuring six plaintiffs. One plaintiff recovered nothing and two plaintiffs were later severed out because of the workers' compensation exclusive-remedy bar. They jury awarded the remaining three plaintiffs sizable awards.
On appeal, ExxonMobil challenged the legal and factual sufficiency of various damages awards. This required the court of appeals to examine whether the challenged awards were (1) supported by sufficient evidence to enable reasonable and fair-minded people to differ in their conclusion, and (2) were not contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence as to be clearly wrong and unjust.
Sufficiency Requires Evidentiary Basis
The court's damages analysis centered on mental anguish. In evaluating legal sufficiency, the court credited testimony of "substantial distress," such as persistent nightmares, hypervigilance and panic responses at work, persistent fearfulness of another incident, all supported by psychiatric testimony. In contrast, the court rejected generalized and conclusory testimony lacking specificity, such as claims of occasional nightmares and generalized fears or concerns of anxiety attacks.
The court's evaluation of factual sufficiency continues Chohan's work. First, the court questioned how the jurors arrived at their mental anguish awards: "[D]id the jury simply pick a number and put it in both of the blanks?" Although the jury awarded less than the amounts proposed by plaintiffs' counsel ($6 million for past and $6 million for future mental anguish), the jury awarded equal amounts for past and future anguish, despite the "apparent ten-fold difference in the passages of time."
Second, the court looked to what it called "reasonable guideposts"—i.e., cases involving similar injuries that awarded mental anguish damages. The court immediately rejected those cases with the largest awards ($1 million+) as dissimilar because they involved "shocking or catastrophic injuries." Instead, the court turned to the body of case law with the most comparable injuries: car-wreck cases where a plaintiff may suffer a herniated disc or the like. In conducting that review, the court could not find "comparable guideposts," noting that the mental anguish damages awarded in Brown were more than double the most analogous unsegregated award. Lacking an evidentiary basis and falling outside relevant guideposts, the court rejected the awards in Brown as excessive.
The court also examined the sufficiency of damages awarded for physical impairment, disfigurement, future medical expenses, and lost-earning capacity. Although it rendered take-nothing judgments on physical impairment damages, it affirmed the lost-earning capacity award and found the remaining awards legally sufficient.
The court remanded for a new trial on two plaintiffs' negligence claims where the court held the evidence supporting specific categories of non-economic damages were legally sufficient. The court explained that because liability was contested below, the rules prevented remand for unliquidated damages alone and instead required remand for a new trial on all legally sufficient damages.
Conclusion
The Fourteenth Court of Appeals' opinion in Brown provides further clarity on permissible non-economic damages awards. Plaintiffs must have an evidentiary basis for their non-economic damages, and those damages cannot be excessive as compared to other Texas cases with similar (or more severe) injuries.
Footnote
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