Court Opinion

ID: 9418761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:38:34.463294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:09.765103
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stone and Mr. Justice Cardozo,
dissenting.
A verdict found in contravention of the instructions of the court may be reversed on appeal as contrary to law.
So much the prevailing opinion apparently concedes.
*487The verdict of $1 returned by the jury upon the trial of this cause may not be squared with their instructions and hence was properly annulled.
By the instructions of the trial judge they were required, if they found that the defendant had broken its contract, to award to the plaintiffs the difference between the contract price of the coal and its market value, after allowance for the defendant’s counterclaim. The evidence most favorable to the defendant, both as to claim and counterclaim, made it necessary, if there was any breach, to return a substantial verdict, the minimum being capable of accurate computation. The distinction is not to be ignored between this case of a breach of contract and the cases cited in the prevailing opinion where the liability was in tort. Here the minimum, if not the maximum, damages are fixed and definite. There the discretion of the jury was not subject to tests so determinate and exact. The question is not before us whether even in such circumstances there may be revision on appeal. Cf. Pugh v. Bluff City Excursion Co., 177 Fed. 399. Enough for present purposes that in the circumstances of the case at hand the verdict for $1 is a finding that the contract had been broken, and this irrespective of the motive that caused the verdict to be given. What the motive was we cannot know from anything disclosed to us by the record. Nothing there disclosed lays a basis for a holding that the nominal verdict for the plaintiffs was designed to save them from the costs which the law would have charged against them if there had been a verdict for defendant. The jury were not instructed as to the liability for costs, and for all that appears had no knowledge on the subject. Nor would such a motive, if there were reason to ascribe it, rescue them from the reproach of disobedience and error. It would merely substitute one form of misconduct for another. It would do this, moreover, in contradiction of the record. By no process of mere *488construction can a verdict that nominal loss has resulted from a breach be turned into a verdict that there had been no breach at all. On the face of the record, the jury found there was a wrong, and then, in contravention of instructions, refused, either through misunderstanding or through wilfulness, to assess the damages ensuing.
Justice is not promoted in its orderly administration when such conduct is condoned.