Court Opinion

ID: 9809153
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:02:22.596044+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:25:20.218137
License: Public Domain

OlaRK, C. J\,
dissenting: This action began in 1898, and has been pending fifteen years. In that time the plaintiff has recovered four several verdicts; forty-eight jurymen have unanimously decided in his favor and four Superior Court judges, who heard the evidence, and who understood the surrounding circumstances attendant upon the trials, have approved their verdicts. There ought now, in all justice, to be an end of this litigation.
It is more than doubtful if the objections which have been found by this Court as to these several trials had been avoided whether the juries would not have returned exactly the same verdicts. In some jurisdictions, whether by constitutional provision or by legislative enactment, it is now forbidden the appellate, court to grant more than one new trial. This rule will certainly be more conducive to justice than the present system, as illustrated by a new trial for the fourth time.
After so many verdicts in his favor, and against so powerful and influential an opponent, it would be well to disregard mere technical iucorrectness in the charge, or other technical errors in the admission of evidence, since some of these can always be found, as the history of this case shows, in all long trials where a cause is hotly contested. It seems to me that justice • requires that technicalities should now be disregarded and that in the interest of justice, after four verdicts in his favor and after fifteen years of litigation,-the plaintiff should be allowed to rest upon his hard-earned victory.
*531Tbe jury might bave estimated tbe damages as of tbe time of tbe injury, bave added fifteen years interest and returned a lump sum as tbeir verdict. It would bave been better if they bad done tbis. But it ought not to be held for error that tbe jury showed us tbe workings of their minds and stated tbeir estimate of tbe injury at tbe time of its occurrence and directed that interest from that time to the date when the plaintiff should receive bis compensation should be added.
In my opinion, tbe judgment should be affirmed.