Case ID: ny-st-rep_22/html/0226-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "- Per Ouriam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Abraham Phillips, Resp’t, v. Frank A. Munsey, App’lt.
    
      (New York Common Pleas, General Term,
    
    
      Filed January 7, 1889.)
    
    1. Appeal from district court to common pleas—Court mat review EVIDENCE.
    Upon appeal from a judgment rendered in a district court of the city o£ New York to the common pleas, the court may review the evidence and reverse upon the facts. Following, MacNiffe v. Imdington (13 Abb. N. 0., 407.)
    3. Verdict—When excessive—Evidence.
    In an action to recover the value of certain engraving work, called “ reproduction work,” where the evidence shows the usual and reasonable compensation for engraving the original work vas forty cents per inch, and that reproduction work required less labor and skill, at whicti rates-the value of the work sued for would be about seventy-five dollars, a judgment for $150 and costs cannot be sustained.
    Appeal from a judgment of a district court.
    The action was brought to recover $247, the alleged value of certain engraving work, consisting of six blocks or plates. Defendant disputed the value of the work, and alleged that it was done under an agreement which had existed for some time prior thereto, that plaintiff should do the defendant’s engraving work for forty cents a square-inch. This was undisputed. It was also undisputed that the engraving in question was reproduced from blocks or pictures which had previously been engraved, and was, therefore, what was called “reproduction work.” It was shown by expert testimony that reproduction work was worth fifty to seventy-five per cent less than original work. Plaintiff had judgment for $150, which was about twice as-much as the engraving would have amounted to at forty cents per inch.
    
      Fullerton & Rushmore, for app’lt; H. Joseph, for resp’t.
   - Per Ouriam.

—There cannot be a doubt that forty cents-per inch is a fair and reasonable price for reproduction, and that a charge of two dollars per inch is unjust and highly extortionate. It may well be that wood-engraving of a high* •class, such as would be inserted by the Appletons in their illustrated books, would be worth fifty dollars each, but it is utterly preposterous to claim any such value for the common, not to say inferior specimens that the plaintiff made for the defendant’s use. The evidence is so strongly against the price that the plaintiff has charged for the reproductions that we deem this a fit case for the application of the rule laid down in MacNiffe v. Ludington (13 Abb. N. C., 407), and we, therefore, shall overrule the judgment of the justice of the district court.

Tae judgment of the district court will be reversed, absolutely, unless the plaintiff should consent to modify it by reducing it to a sum that will give to the plaintiff as dama.ges the price of the work completed at forty cents per inch. To this amount of damages may be added the costs of this ■action, except the costs of this appeal, which we shall not ■award to either party.