Source: https://openjurist.org/293/us/474
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 02:58:38+00:00

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We could well rest this opinion upon that conclusion, were it not for the contention that our federal courts from a very early day have upheld the authority of a trial court to deny a motion for new trial because damages were found to be excessive, if plaintiff would consent to remit the excessive amount, and that this holding requires us to recognize a similar rule in respect of increasing damages found to be grossly inadequate. There is a decision by Mr. Justice Story, sitting on circuit, authorizing such a remittitur, as early as 1822. Blunt v. Little, Fed. Cas. No. 1,578, 3 Mason, 102. There, the jury returned a verdict for $2,000 damages, suffered as a result of a malicious arrest. Defendant moved for a new trial on the ground that the damages were excessive. The court asserted its power to grant a new trial upon that ground, but directed that the cause should be submitted to another jury unless plaintiff was willing to remit $500 of the damages. This view of the matter was accepted by this court in Northern Pacific R.R. .co. v. Herbert, 116 U.S. 642, 646, 647, 6 S.Ct. 590, 29 L.Ed. 755, and has been many times reiterated. See, for example, Arkansas Valley Land & Cattle Co. v. Mann, 130 U.S. 69, 73, 9 S.Ct. 458, 32 L.Ed. 854; Kennon v. Gilmer, 131 U.S. 22, 29, 9 S.Ct. 696, 33 L.Ed. 110; Koenigsberger v. Richmond Silver Min. Co., 158 U.S. 41, 52, 15 S.Ct. 751, 39 L.Ed. 889; German Alliance Ins. Co. v. Hale, 219 U.S. 307, 312, 31 S.Ct. 246, 55 L.Ed. 229; Gila Valley Ry. Co. v. Hall, 232 U.S. 94, 103—105, 34 S.Ct. 229, 58 L.Ed. 521.
In the last analysis, the sole support for the decisions of this court and that of Mr. Justice Story, so far as they are pertinent to cases like that now in hand, must rest upon the practice of some of the English judges—a practice which has been condemned as opposed to the principles of the common law by every reasoned English decision, both before and after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, which we have been able to find.
As a corollary to these rules is the further one of the common law, long accepted in the federal courts, that the exercise of judicial discretion in denying a motion for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict is too small or too large, is not subject to review on writ of error or appeal. New York C. & H. Railroad Co. v. Fraloff, supra, 100 U.S. 31, 25 L.Ed. 531; Wabash Ry. Co. v. McDaniels, 107 U.S. 454, 456, 2 S.Ct. 932, 27 L.Ed. 605; Fitzgerald & Mallory Const. Co. v. Fitzgerald, 137 U.S. 98, 113, 11 S.Ct. 36, 34 L.Ed. 608; Wilson v. Everett, supra, 139 U.S. 621, 11 S.Ct. 664, 35 L.Ed. 286; Lincoln v. Power, supra, 151 U.S. 438, 14 S.Ct. 387, 38 L.Ed. 224; Luckenbach S.S. Co. v. United States, 272 U.S. 533, 540, 47 S.Ct. 186, 71 L.Ed. 394. This is but a special application of the more general rule that an appellate court will not re-examine the facts which induced the trial court to grant or deny a new trial.1 Barr v. Gratz, 4 Wheat. 213, 220, 4 L.Ed. 553; The Abbotsford, 98 U.S. 440, 445, 25 L.Ed. 168; Railroad Co. v. Fraloff, supra, 100 U.S. 31, 25 L.Ed. 531; Terre Haute & Indiana Ry. Co. v. Struble, 109 U.S. 381, 384, 385, 3 S.Ct. 270, 27 L.Ed. 970; Fishburn v. Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co., 137 U.S. 60, 61, 11 S.Ct. 8, 34 L.Ed. 585; Ayers v. Watson, 137 U.S. 584, 597, 11 S.Ct. 201, 34 L.Ed. 803; Wilson v. Everett, supra, 139 U.S. 621, 11 S.Ct. 664, 35 L.Ed. 286; Luckenbach S.S. Co. v. United States, supra, 272 U.S. 540, 47 S.Ct. 186, 71 L.Ed. 394.
Thus this Court has held that a federal court, without the consent of the parties, may constitutionally appoint auditors to hear testimony, examine books and accounts, and frame and report upon issues of fact, as an aid to the jury in arriving at its verdict, Ex parte Peterson, 253 U.S. 300, 40 S.Ct. 543, 64 L.Ed. 919; it may require both a general and a special verdict and set aside the general verdict for the plaintiff and direct a verdict for the defendant on the basis of the facts specially found, Walker v. New Mexico & Southern Pacific R. Co., 165 U.S. 593, 17 S.Ct. 421, 41 L.Ed. 837; and it may accept so much of the verdict as declares that the plaintiff is entitled to recover, and set aside so much of it as fixes the amount of the damages, and order a new trial of that issue alone, Gasoline Products Co., Inc., v. Champlin Refining Co., 283 U.S. 494, 51 S.Ct. 513, 75 L.Ed. 1188. Yet none of these procedures was known to the common law. In fact, the very practice, so firmly imbedded in federal procedure, of making a motion for a new trial directly to the trial judge, instead of to the court en banc, was never adopted by the common law.2 But this Court has found in the Seventh Amendment no bar to the adoption by the federal courts of these novel methods of dealing with the verdict of a jury, for they left unimpaired the function of the jury to decide issues of fact, which it had exercised before the adoption of the amendment. Compare Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U.S. 249, 264, 53 S.Ct. 345, 77 L.Ed. 730, 87 A.L.R. 1191.
The question with which we are now concerned—what considerations shall govern an appellate review of this discretionary action of the trial court—is one unknown to the common law, which provided for no such review. We are afforded but a meager and fragmentary guide if our review is to be controlled by the Seventh Amendment, read as though it had incorporated by reference the particular details of English trial practice exhibited by the law books in 1791. We know that as late as the middle of the eighteenth century the English courts, by directing an increase of the judgment where the verdict was thought to be inadequate, had exercised an extraordinary measure of control over the verdict of the jury in cases of mayhem and battery; and that the practice of denying a new trial upon a remittitur had received some recognition in the English courts. Belt v. Lawes, supra, 359 of L.R. 12 Q.B.D.; Watt v. Watt, (1905) A.C. 115, 122. But in no recorded case does it appear that any English judge had considered the possibility of denying a new trial where the defendant had consented to increase the amount of recovery.
But I cannot agree that we are circumscribed by so narrow and rigid a conception of the common law. The Judiciary Act of 1789, c. 20, 1 Stat. 73, which impliedly adopted the common-law rules of evidence for criminal trials in federal courts, and which gave to the federal courts jurisdiction of equity as it had then been developed in England, and the state constitutions which adopted the common law as affording rules for judicial decision, have never been construed as accepting only those rules which could then be found in the English precedents. When the Constitution was adopted, the common law was something more than a miscellaneous collection of precedents. It was a system, then a growth of some five centuries, to guide judicial decision. One of its principles, certainly as important as any other, and that which assured the possibility of the continuing vitality and usefulness of the system, was its capacity for growth and development, and its adaptability to every new situation to which it might be needful to apply it. 'This flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation is,' as the Court declared in Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 530, 4 S.Ct. 111, 118, 28 L.Ed. 232, 'the peculiar boast and excellence of the common law.' See, also, Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366, 385—387, 18 S.Ct. 383, 42 L.Ed. 780; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 101, 29 S.Ct. 14, 53 L.Ed. 97; Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 380—386, 54 S.Ct. 212, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136.
This Court has recently had occasion to point out that the common-law rules, governing the admissibility of evidence and the competency of witnesses in the federal courts are not the particular rules which were in force in 1791, but are those rules adapted to present day conditions, 'in accordance with presentday standards of wisdom and justice rather than in accordance with some outworn and antiquated rule of the past.' Funk v. United States, supra, 290 U.S. 382, 54 S.Ct. 212, 215, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136; see also Wolfle v. United States, 291 U.S. 7, 12, 54 S.Ct. 279, 78 L.Ed. 617; Holden v. Hardy, supra, 169 U.S. 385—387, 18 S.Ct. 383, 42 L.Ed. 780.
In England, before the adoption of the Seventh Amendment, the motion was made not to the trial judge but to the court sitting en banc. Blackstone's Commentaries, v. 3, p. 391; Tidd's Practice, v. 2, pp. 819—821. By the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875, 38 & 39 Vict., c. 77, Order 58, see Order 39 of Rules of Supreme Court of Judicature, the motion was required to be made to the Court of Appeal, from whose decision an appeal might be taken to the House of Lords.

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