Court Opinion

ID: 9711374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:30:31.950383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:04.357529
License: Public Domain

Yeager, J.,
dissenting.
I have no fault to find with that part of the majority opinion which holds that the trial court erred in sustaining the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. I agree that there was sufficient evidence to sustain the verdict which was returned in favor of the plaintiff, and that it was error after the verdict was returned for the court to substitute its judgment for that of the jury as was obviously done in this case.
I cannot however agree with that portion of the opinion the effect of which is to say that, where a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a motion for new trial are filed comformable to section 25-1315.02, R. R. S. 1943, and the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict is sustained without a ruling on the motion for new trial, and this court reverses the judgment notwithstanding the verdict, unless the appellee asserts in his brief the errors assigned in this motion for new trial he waives the right thereafter to have the district court or this court rule upon them.
In the latest majority opinion in Krepcik v. Interstate Transit Lines, ante p. 98, 43 N. W. 2d 609, with which I did not and do not now agree this court did not go that far.
It cannot well be said that the majority did not go that far because the attention of the court was not challenged to the theory and the matter was not presented for consideration. To the contrary, as is clearly demon*359strated by the numerous briefs filed in that case, the theory was vigorously and exhaustively presented, at the end of which it was not sustained, but hearing was allowed in this court. Moreover, on hearing in this court the assignments of error contained in the motion for new trial were considered and a new trial was granted on the basis of such assignments.
Since the hearing and decision in Krepcik v. Interstate Transit Lines, supra, there has been neither legislative change nor promulgation of rule authorizing this radical departure from what was done in that case.
The procedural history in that case is identical with the procedural history in this case, and if the defendant there was entitled to a hearing on its motion for new trial after disposition of the motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict in this court a reasonable regard for consistency requires that the same treatment be given to the defendant in this case.
Boslaugh, J., concurs in this dissent.