Plaintiffs, as limited by their briefs, appeal from that portion of an order of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Bronx County, entered October 3, 2003 (Irving Rosen, J.) which 1) granted defendants' motion for a new trial on the issue of past lost earnings unless plaintiffs stipulated to reduce the jury's award therefor from $188,187 to $2,400, and 2) denied plaintiffs' cross motion, inter alia, to set aside the jury's award of past lost earnings as inadequate.

PER CURIAM:

Order entered October 3, 2003 (Irving Rosen, J.) modified to increase the amount to which plaintiffs must
stipulate to avoid a new trial on past lost earnings to $50,000, and otherwise affirmed, without costs.

This action seeks recovery of damages for injuries sustained by the first-named plaintiff when, in June 1996, the ceiling of his residential apartment fell and struck him. Evidence at trial was that plaintiff went to a local emergency room the day after the accident, where he was diagnosed, inter alia, with a "mild" head trauma, and that he received medical treatment for the head, shoulder, and back injures complained of herein for approximately two years. With respect to plaintiff's employment, the evidence is undisputed that plaintiff returned to his position as an automobile sales manager (at an annual salary of roughly $20,000) within two weeks of the accident and eventually left that job two or three months later. The parties offered divergent testimony as to the reasons for plaintiff's job termination. In this regard, plaintiff's employer, testifying as a defense witness, stated that plaintiff left voluntarily despite favorable performance evaluations, while plaintiff testified that he was fired because he was unable to perform his duties as a result of [*2]
the injuries caused by the accident. The jury awarded plaintiff $188,187 for past lost earnings and awarded no recovery for future lost earnings. The trial court set aside the jury verdict to the extent of conditionally reducing the award of past lost earnings to $2,400, and this even though defendants in their motion to set aside the verdict affirmatively sought a more modest reduction of that award to $22,000.

Despite the deference typically accorded to the jury's assessment of damages (see Warnke v Warner-Lambert Co., 21 AD3d 654 [2005]; McKay v Ciani, 288 AD2d 587, 589 [2001]), we find, as did the trial court, that the award of over $188,000 for past lost earnings deviated materially from what would be reasonable compensation and was excessive. However, the trial court's $2,400 remittitur, at odds with the $22,000 award that defendants themselves acknowledged below was warranted, is clearly inadequate. We modify to increase the past lost earnings award to $50,000, an amount supported by plaintiff's medical and other evidence (see generally Place v Federal Pac. Elec. Co., 241 AD2d 317, 319 [1997]).

We have considered and rejected plaintiffs' remaining arguments.

This constitutes the decision and order of the Court.
Decision Date: October 31, 2005