Court Opinion

ID: 9619833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:33:56.405566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:44.921801
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring).
I concur, only because the jury found as it did on facts which, viewed in a light most favorable to defendant, reasonably could justify the verdict. If the jury did not believe the plaintiff, such a result could be reached. For example, the jury could have believed defendant’s evidence that plaintiff had received more compensation than he testified to or of which he had a record. Knowing the plaintiff and his reputation in the community, had the writer been a juror, he would have believed the plaintiff and hence would have concluded that, based on his testimony, the amount awarded, amounting to about $5 per month, was ridiculous, and would have presented a striking contrast in opinion as to what a lawyer’s services are worth today as compared to those of 1897,1 where we held reasonable a $3,000 fee for attorneys whose “employment extended over about eight months, and much of their time was taken during the first two months in the investigations they made, with the assistance of an expert accountant and the receivers”, and where “a number of suits were instituted that were not tried” and “but comparatively little time was occupied in court,” where “no difficult trial appears to have occurred, and the results to the parties to the litigation were moderate.” But the writer and this court were not and cannot pretend to be the jury in this case, and our personal feelings in any such matter cannot exceed the four corners of the record made.

. Geyser Min. Co. v. Bank of Salt Lake, 16 Utah 163, 51 P. 151, 152.