Question

Court procedures allow judges to alter jury verdicts based upon properly filed post-judgment motions. These motions include JNOV and new trial, both of which are mentioned by your authors. There are other post-trial motions including remittiture and additure, where judges can reduce monetary awards given by juries (remittiture) and/or increase the awards given (additure). However, Alabama is one of the only states in the Union to allow judges to grant remittiture motions reducing verdicts but does not allow additure at all. Do you feel that this practice in Alabama of not allowing judges to add to verdicts while allowing judges to reduce money judgments is fair? Why or why not?

Answer 1

In Alabama, judges are allowed the remittiture i.e. authority of reducing the monetary awards given
by the juries. However. they are not allowed the additure i.e. authority to increase the awards given by
the juries. In my viewpoint, this practice is not fair and justified. If the court is allowed to reduce
the monetary awards given by the jury, it should also have the rights to increase the awards. It
would provide equal opportunity for both the parties involved in a case 1.e. the defendants and the
plaintiffs to file post-judgment motions. Hence, if any party involved in the case feels that he is not
compensated fairly, then they can file post-judgment motions and get the review