Case ID: mass_3/html/0204-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Abraham Lincoln versus John R. Goulding.
    A plaintiff recovers less than four pounds damage in an action commenced at the Court of Common Pleas; full costs are allowed him; he reviews the action, and recovers one cent damage ; the defendant shall recover the difference ot the two sums awarded as damage, together with full costs of the review.
    In the original action, of which this is a review, the plaintiff recovered eleven dollars damage. The Court adjudged him full costs, being of opinion that he had a reasonable expectation of recovering larger damages than four pounds 
      . The plaintiff brought this review, with a view of obtaining larger damages. He recovered but one cent on the review.
    And now, F. Blake, for the defendant, moves the Court that the costs of the original suit may be reduced to one fourth of the damages found on the review, the second verdict having disproved the opinion of the Court on the first trial.
    
      Bigelow, for the plaintiff,
    cited the case of Billerica vs. Carlisle 
      ; and he observed that the opinion of the Court as to the reasonableness of the plaintiff’s expectation, was still in force, notwithstanding a jury had seen fit to be of a different opinion.
    
      
       Vide Stat. 1786, c. 51.
    
    
      
       2 Mass. Rep. 158
    
   The next day the Chief Justice observed that the Court had attended to the question, and were all of opinion that where, upon a review, the former judgment is not reversed in whole, the Court has no jurisdiction of the costs of the first trial. Full costs were allowed by the Court, pursuant to the power vested in them by the statute. The equity is with the defendant, who rested [ * 235 ] satisfied with the former judgment, but * the whole, which he is legally entitled to, is the difference between the damages recovered in the original suit, and those now found, together with the costs of the review.