Court Opinion

ID: 5652174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-11 23:20:44.4451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:38:38.221783
License: Public Domain

CONREY, P. J., Concurring.
I concur in the judgment. The fact that there was a contract between the plaintiffs and the defendant, and a breach of contract by the defendant, is thoroughly established by the evidence. The surviving part of the controversy relates only to the amount of damages to which the plaintiffs are entitled. The amount awarded by the jury is justified by the evidence, unless we can say that the instructions of the court to the jury permitted and presumably caused the jury to take into consideration elements of damage to which the plaintiffs were not entitled, and even so, such error in the instructions need not cause a reversal of the judgment if the consequences of the error have been neutralized by the action of the trial judge in reducing the amount of the judgment.
The court in its instructions to the jury, in connection with a statement of the issues of fact presented for decision, stated to them that “If you find that the order was given and accepted and was not executed, then you must determine whether the plaintiffs suffered any damage as a result of such failure, and if so, how much, and ... If you find that the order was given and accepted, and was not executed, and that the plaintiffs were damaged, then you must determine the question of whether or not the plaintiffs acted unreasonably in waiting until April of 1932' to sell said shares and whether or not, by so doing, the plaintiffs waived their right to complain about the defendant’s failure to execute the order. ’ ’
Appellant makes no objection to the foregoing instruction. The exceptions taken are directed against further instructions which in further detail announced the rules of law which should guide the jury in determining whether there was any breach of contract, and in ascertaining the amount of damages, if the plaintiffs were entitled to any such compensation. These instructions were conditioned upon the finding of stated facts by the jury, if from the evidence the jury found that those facts existed. Substantially I think that the law was correctly stated by the court, although in some particulars the words chosen to express the thought of the court may not be *552entirely accurate. But I cannot see wherein the jury was really misinformed upon the law of the case. And in so far as they could have affected the amount of damages awarded it is not at all probable in any event that the damages would have been less than the amount stated in the judgment. In other words, it has not been shown that in the rendition of the judgment there has been any miscarriage of justice.
Houser, J., concurred in the judgment and in both the foregoing opinions.