Court of Appeals sustains $50,000 in pain and suffering for civil battery

This case went to trial, and the jury found for the plaintiff on her claim that a doctor-supervisor subjected her to sexual touching. The jury rejected her other claims, including that her employer, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discriminated against her on the basis of sex and retaliated against her for objecting to such treatment. The jury awarded her $50,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages. Her appeal seeks a new trial because the damages were not high enough. The Court of Appeals rejects the appeal.

The case is Singh v. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a summary order issued on October 28. The supervisor who subjected plaintiff to battery was Dr. Pillarsetty. Plaintiff, a doctor, testified that Pillarsetty would hug her tightly, place his hand on her back, grab her buttock, placed his hands on her thighs, and touched her hand and shoulder. She also testified that the defendant placed his hand on her stomach area and slid his hand toward her breast. The jury agreed that plaintiff suffered a civil battery and awarded her $250,000 in damages. The jury did not find that plaintiff was sexually harassed, however, or that she suffered sexual assault. So the jury threaded the needle: it found unwanted touching but not sexual touching.

Plaintiff's appeal seeks a new trial on damages. Such relief on appeal is very difficult to win. We trust juries to set damages awards, and if the jury awards too much money and the amount "shocks the conscience," the trial court (and the Court of Appeals, if necessary) will reduce that amount. But if the jury awards too little, the trial court is usually powerless to increase the amount. Hence this appeal.

The Court of Appeals (Jacobs, Merriam and Cronan, D.J.) defers to the jury's damages assessment. It finds that the jury had various ways to award plaintiff this amount. trial. "The District Court carefully evaluated the evidence, identifying several plausible explanations for the jury’s decision to award $50,000 in compensatory damages. For example, the District Court noted that the jury might have credited Singh’s testimony about the unwanted touching, but not her uncorroborated claims about its sexual nature or extent." In other words, the jury did a credibility assessment and rejected the strongest allegations involving sexual touching. The trial court also stated in its post-trial ruling on this issue that the jury could have awarded only $50,000 for pain and suffering because it determined that other stressors in her life also caused her pain and suffering.

The Court of Appeals also holds that the damages award is comparable to similar cases. That also works against plaintiff's appeal. "The District Court also considered precedent, finding that the award in this case was 'comparable to the size of awards granted in cases involving very similar claims,' and that cases cited by Singh in which juries had awarded higher damages had generally involved “more harm than emotional distress alone.”