Court Opinion

ID: 9448330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:31:42.726893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:22.943482
License: Public Domain

FAHY, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in reversing the judgment entered in favor of the Transit Company notwithstanding the verdict of the jury in favor of the plaintiff. I would not, however, grant a new trial but would direct reinstatement of the jury verdict and entry of judgment for the plaintiff. The crucial question was whether the jury would credit the testimony of the plaintiff and her small son as to the happening of the accident when they were unsuccessfully attempting to board a bus of the Company. This testimony in substance was that the door of the bus temporarily caught plaintiff’s leg. The bus driver did not see the alleged accident, and neither he nor any passenger who remained on the bus reported it. Plaintiff, however, notified the Company the same day, and the matter was then investigated by the Company.
The defense was an attack on the credibility of plaintiff and her child, so that the case posed a classical jury question, which the jury answered. It is in derogation of the jury function, as it seems to me, for the conclusion they reached, attributable to no error of law, not to be given effect. See Lind v. Schenley Industries, Inc., 278 F.2d 79, 87-91 (3rd Cir., 1960), cert. denied 364 U.S. 835, 81 S.Ct. 78, 5 L.Ed.2d 60, where, following a thorough discussion, the opinion states in part:
“But where no undesirable or pernicious element has occurred or been introduced into the trial and the trial judge nonetheless grants a new trial on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, the trial judge in negating the jury’s verdict-has, to some extent at least, substituted his judgment of the facts and the credibility of the witnesses for that of the jury. Such an action effects a denigration of the jury system and to the extent that new trials are granted the judge takes over, if he does not usurp, the prime function of the jury as the trier of the facts. It then becomes the duty of the appellate tribunal to exercise a closer degree of scrutiny and supervision than is the case where a new trial is granted because *328of some undesirable or pernicious influence obtruding into the trial. Such a close scrutiny is required in order to protect the litigants’ right to jury trial.”
278 F.2d at 90. The court then pointed out that since the case turned upon credibility, an issue which was resolved by the jury, the grant of the new trial constituted an abuse of the court’s “legal discretion,” requiring reinstatement of the verdict of the jury.
Our ease is even clearer than Lind, for here the learned trial judge thought plaintiff made no case for the jury. He accordingly granted judgment for the defendant, n. o. v. This court now holds there was a case for the jury; that is, that the evidence was sufficient to enable the jury to find for the plaintiff. No gaps need to be filled to make out a jury question which could be, as it was decided favorably to the plaintiff.