Case ID: ga_94/html/0418-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Buice v. McCrary.
    The action being upon an account for lumber sold and delivered, and the verdict being for the plaintiff in these terms: “ We the jury-find for plaintiff forty-one dollars and four cents principal and interest,” the verdict is ambiguous, inasmuch as it does not clearly disclose whether the interest referred to was interest to be computed on the amount specified, or was interest already computed and included in that amount. For this ambiguity the court was warranted in granting a new trial, and the judgment granting it is affirmed. But inasmuch as the only prejudicial result to the defendant below would be that he might be charged with interest on interest as well as interest on the principal of the debt, and as this result can, at the option of his adversary, be avoided, direction is given that if the plaintiff will, during the term at which the remittitur from this court shall be entered, vacate the judgment he has heretofore entered up on the verdict, and in lieu thereof will enter judgment for the specific amount named in the verdict, with costs in the court below, with an express renunciation of any interest thereon and an express declaration in the face of the judgment that it shall bear no interest whatever, then no new trial shall be had, but the verdict, thus limited in its effect, shall stand.
    
      Judgment affirmed, with direction.
    
    March 26, 1894.
    Argued at the last term.
    Appeal. Before Judge Henry. Floyd superior court. March, term, 1893.
   Buice sued McCrary in a justice’s court upon an account for 7,661 feet of lumber, at $10 per thousand feet, furnished at various dates from June 15 to December 27, 1888. The case was appealed by defendant to the superior court, where he pleaded not indebted, and that before the bringing of the suit he sued plaintiff’ on a note, claiming $46 principal, and plaintiff’ in defence of this suit filed a plea of set-off in which he claimed as due him for lumber, three items, one of which was the item, “November 24, 1888, lumber, $13.42”; and judgment was obtained against plaintiff' for $23.30 principal ; wherefore defendant alleges that one of the items now sued for by plaintiff’, “ November 24, 1888, lumber from river mill, 1,342 ” feet, has been adjudicated in said former suit. The verdict, dated April 19, 1893, was: “We, the jury, find for plaintiff forty-one dollars and four cents principal and interest.” Defendant moved for a new trial upon the general grounds, and because the verdict should have been for a certain sum as principal and another sum as interest, and the principal and interest should not have been consolidated in one gross sum. Upon the latter ground a new trial was granted. Plaintiff excepted, alleging that the court should have given the verdict a reasonable and legal construction and intendment; contending that the meaning is forty-one dollars and four cents as principal, with interest to be added, the computation of the interest to be made upon said principal, from the time the principal became due, which was January 1, 1889, all of which could be ascertained and fixed by reference to the pleadings.

McHenry, Nunnally & Neel, for plaintiff.

Dean & Smith, by brief, for defendant.