Aline Mary Curran Wife and Nikolaus Scharpf Husband were married on February 1, 1997, and, following a jury trial, were divorced pursuant to an April 8, 2011 Final Judgment and Decree. Following the denial of Wife’s motion for new trial, Wife filed a timely application to appeal, which this Court granted pursuant to the now-expired Pilot Project, by which this Court granted all non-frivolous applications for discretionary review from a final judgment and decree of divorce.1 On appeal, Wife contends that the trial court erred in upholding in the Final Decree the jury’s allegedly erroneous finding that an Individual Retirement Account IRA in Husband’s name was Husband’s separate property that was not subject to equitable division. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.
1. As an initial matter, we must address Husband’s claim on appeal that Wife waived any alleged error in the jury’s verdict when her counsel stated affirmatively that Wife had no objections to the “form” of the verdict returned by the jury. Wife’s failure to object to the form of the jury’s verdict does not mean that Wife has somehow waived her right to make a substantive challenge to the evidentiary basis for the jury’s award on appeal. Wife’s argument has nothing to do with the “form” of the verdict. Indeed, the form of the verdict may have been just fine. It is the substantive finding by the jury in connection with the actual evidence presented at trial with which Wife has a problem, and it is not a problem that could have been fixed through any means connected with the form of the verdict itself. See, e.g., Berry v. Risdall , 1998 SD 18 576 NW2d 1, 5 SD Sup. Ct. 1998 party did not waive right to challenge jury verdict by failing to object to verdict form where “the alleged deficiencies in the verdict were not merely mechanical, but rather, they went to the heart of the jury’s findings”. In short, there is a difference between problems as to form and substantive challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence that go to the heart of the jury’s findings. Id. See also, e.g., Beasley v. Wachovia Bank , 277 Ga. App. 698 1 627 SE2d 417 2006 although party waived right to an “explanation” of the jury’s damages award by failing to include method for calculation of damages on verdict form, Court of Appeals addressed other substantive challenges to sufficiency of evidence that had nothing to do with form of the verdict.
