If the trial court shall, upon a motion for new trial, find the damages awarded by a jury to be so excessive or inadequate as unmistakably to indicate that the amount thereof must have been the result of passion or prejudice, the trial court may order a new trial or may enter an order providing for a new trial unless the party adversely affected shall consent to a reduction or increase of such verdict, and if such party shall file such consent and the opposite party shall thereafter appeal from the judgment entered, the party who shall have filed such consent shall not be bound thereby, but upon such appeal the court of appeals or the supreme court shall, without the necessity of a formal cross-appeal, review de novo the action of the trial court in requiring such reduction or increase, and there shall be a presumption that the amount of damages awarded by the verdict of the jury was correct and such amount shall prevail, unless the court of appeals or the supreme court shall find from the record that the damages awarded in such verdict by the jury were so excessive or so inadequate as unmistakably to indicate that the amount of the verdict must have been the result of passion or prejudice.
RCW 4.76.030
Increase or reduction of verdict as alternative to new trial.
Applied in 65 court decisions — leading case 122 Wash. 2d 299 - Washington State Physicians Insurance Exchange & Ass'n v. Fisons Corp. (1993)
Most recently applied in 21 Wash. App. 2d 56 - Raymond Budd & Vickie Budd, V. Kaiser Gypsum Co., Inc. (February 2022)
1971 c 81 s 19; 1933 c 138 s 2; RRS s 399-1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.