THE DOLLAR IMPACT OF CARTOONS

This week an appellate court in New Jersey ruled on the economic impact of cartoons. (Michelle Migut v. State of New Jersey Administrative Office of The Courts, Docket no. A-2787-18)

A woman claimed she experienced pain and suffering because she had to walk down a flight of stairs during a fire drill.  She said that a prior foot injury gave her a rare condition known as "complex regional pain syndrome" (CRPS). This CRPS caused her to experience "a lot of pain" when she had to use the stairs rather than the elevator, so she sued her employer for millions of dollars.  

 The lawyer for the plaintiff, perhaps doubting her ability to persuade the jury with mere words, commissioned three cartoons to use with the jury:

The cartoons must have been effective because the jury saw them and awarded $2.5 million in damages.  This confirms what I've long suspected: cartoonists are underpaid.

On appeal, the defendant claimed the drawings improperly influenced the jury. This forced the appellate court to analyze key issues of aesthetic theory that have long puzzled the sages.

The court decided to overturn the verdict for several reasons.

The court was obviously no fan of artistic license.  It ruled, 

The cartoon of a woman in a wheelchair with no legs sitting in front of a closed elevator with smoke bore no resemblance to the plaintiff, who has legs and does not rely on a wheelchair. It also mischaracterized the circumstances of the events, which unfolded in the context of a fire drill, not an actual fire. 

This is a very literalist approach to art by a court that is apparently steeped in the traditions of 19th century realism. We are forced to ask: Would an abstract expressionist court have been more open minded?

Second, when the cartoons were used at trial the judge instructed the jury to disregard them because they were "inflammatory and misleading." The appellate court nevertheless overturned the verdict because it believed the jury would not be able to forget the pictures. "The instruction to ignore... after the jury had already seen them was not sufficient." In other words, the prejudicial effect of a picture cannot be overcome by mere words. The court's ruling goes straight to the heart of aesthetic theory about the relative impact of words and pictures.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the trial court might have avoided reversal if it had used 3,000 words to instruct the jury. However, if 3 pictures are worth $2.5 million, we may have entered a new paradigm in faded bromides about art.

Finally, the appellate court, warming to its new role as art critic, disapproved of the way the drawings distorted the jury's view of reality and thereby "inflated compensation for the plaintiff's alleged emotional distress." One cartoon depicted the plaintiff's employer as a "buffoon." Another cartoon of "a woman covering her face with her hands under the title: 'Compensation for Emotional Damages' was an appeal to sympathy intended to inflate compensation...."

Philosophers and aesthetes may haggle endlessly about the metaphysics of art, but as I've said before, if you need a concrete answer you're always better off consulting a lawyer.