Under Louisiana law, a court should reduce a jury’s award when it is “beyond that which a reasonable trier of fact could assess for the effects of the particular injury to the particular plaintiff under the particular circumstances.” Youn v. Mar. Overseas Corp., 623 So. 2d 1257, 1261 (La. 1993). Louisiana law would not look to “prior awards in cases with generically similar medical injuries to determine whether the particular trier of fact abused its discretion” in its award to the particular plaintiff under the particular facts of a case. Id. at 1260. After a Louisiana appellate court has determined that the award was an abuse of discretion, it may then look to prior awards to determine the highest reasonable award. Id. Under the maximum-recovery rule, we will uphold a damages award where the damages amount is proportionate to at least one factually similar, published Louisiana case. See Longoria, 932 F.3d at 365. We refuse to overturn jury awards that are within 150% of the highest award in a factually similar case. Puga, 922 F.3d at 297. This rule preserves as much of the jury’s award as possible. Longoria, 932 F.3d at 365.
Here, the award was excessive under either standard. Echeverry had three surgeries to repair her ankle injuries. She had a trimalleolar fracture, involving breaks to her lateral malleolus, medial malleolus, and posterior malleolus. The fracture was comminuted, meaning that her ankle was in pieces. Echeverry’s ankle already shows signs of post-traumatic arthritis. She will have chronic, “toothache”-like pain for the rest of her life, as well as scarring. Further, part of her cartilage is permanently damaged. Echeverry returned to work in January 2018 as a pharmacy technician, standing for about eight hours a day, and had her third surgery in August 2018. She takes over-the-counter pain medication throughout the workday to help with her pain. At the time of trial, she was thirty-three years old and had no physical restrictions from doctors. An expert at trial testified that Echeverry’s life expectancy was 52.2 years. The million-dollar award for future pain and
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