Court Opinion

ID: 9639669
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:43:46.489586+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:20.888148
License: Public Domain

MOBTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I regret that I am unable to agree, and, as the question is of some general importance, I will state my views.
The essential facts are simple. The plaintiff sued the defendant at law to recover damages for personal injuries, and obtained a verdiet. He regarded the verdict as much too small, and moved to set it aside on the ground of inadequacy of damages. The trial judge made an order that: “If the defendant will file in this case a stipulation consenting to an increase of $1,000 in the damages from the sum of $500, as found by the jury, to $1,500, on or before April 21, 1933, the plaintiff’s motion for a new trial is to be denied. Otherwise, it is to be granted and the case tried de novo, both on the question of liability and damages.” The defendant filed the stipulation called for, and judgment was- duly entered thereon.
The plaintiff has appealed, and contends: (1) That the District Judge exceeded his authority in giving the defendant the election to avoid a new trial by stipulating an increase m damages; (2) that the order should stand as one granting a new trial.
It is argued that the order was invalid, both at common, law and under the Seventh *563Amendment to the Constitution. The Seventh Amendment reads as follows:
“In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the. United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
It occasionally happens that in assessing damages a jury returns an amount beyond any figures which could be reached upon a fair and reasonable consideration of the case. In that event it becomes, under our practice, the duty of the trial judge to set the verdict aside, unless the plaintiff elects to reduce it by a remittitur to a just figure stated by the judge. The use of remittiturs implies power in the trial judge to determine the upper limit of reasonable damages, as was clearly pointed out in Arkansas Valley Land & Cattle Co. v. Mann, 130 U. S. 69, 9 S. Ct. 458, 32 L. Ed. 854; cited in 51 L. R. A. (N. S.) 861 (note). There is a lower limit to reasonable damages as well as an upper one; and this is equally for the trial judge to determine. On the lower side, the question is somewhat complicated by the possibility that certain jurors might have yielded doubts as to liability in view of a small award on damages, who would not have yielded their doubts if the damages had been larger. See Fairmount Glass Wks. v. Cub Fork Coal Co., 287 U. S. 474, 475, 53 S. Ct. 252, 77 L. Ed. 439. We need not concern ourselves, however, with this aspect of the matter, because the defendant has accepted the verdict on liability and has stipulated that the damages might be increased. We are dealing only with objections by the plaintiff to the order which was made.
In the remittitur cases, the intention of the jury is assumed to be to give the highest damages legally permissible. The trial judge, in effeet, names that figure, and gives the plaintiff an election to accept it. I cannot see why the same principle does not apply when the damages found by the jury are below the minimum reasonable amount, nor why the trial judge may not state the minimum reasonable figure, as he admittedly may state the maximum one, and give the defendant the election of paying it or submitting to a new trial. In each instance the verdict is accepted as to liability and the intention of the jury as to damages is given effeet as far as legally permissible. In neither instance is the amount of the damages determined by the jury. But this does not prevent remittiturs, and, as I have said, I can see no distinction affecting the powers of the trial judge, between them and the order made in this case, which might perhaps be termed an “additur.” In the majority opinion remittiturs are distinguished on the ground that the defendant “is not prejudiced, because the judgment entered is for a less amount than a jury has already found against him.” But it is not explained in what way the appealing plaintiff is prejudiced who receives more damages than a jury has found for him. I cannot see this distinction, on which in the last analysis the majority decision rests, nor do any of the English judges appear to have recognized it. On the contrary, the Court of Appeals explicitly refer to reducing a verdict or increasing it by action of the trial judge, as resting on the same legal foundation. Both had been done in England until both were outlawed by the Watt (1905 A. C. 115) Case, which, although quoted from in the majority opinion, is clearly not the law of the federal courts. Arkansas Valley Land & Cattle Co. v. Mann, supra, and cases cited below.
In Belt v. Lawes, 12 Q. B. D. 356, in the Court of Appeal Lord Esher says: “The Court has power to refuse a new trial without the consent of the defendant, on the plaintiff’s consenting to the amount of the damages being reduced to such an amount as, if it had been given by the jury, the Court would not have considered excessive. * * * ”
He then adds: “Suppose a case in which a new trial should be moved for on behalf of the plaintiff, on the ground that the amount of damages which the jury had given was obviously unreasonably too small” — exactly the present case — “I am far from saying that the Court would not have power in favour of the defendant, and in his interest, to say that the damages given are too small, but that if the defendant will agree to their being increased to such a sum as may be stated, a new trial shall be refused.” The other justices, Bag-galley and Lindley, concurred in these views. With respect to the practice thus approved, Lord Davey says in Watt v. Watt: “I do not doubt that such orders (remittiturs) have been frequently made, but they have not been challenged, and in the vast majority of cases the defendant is well advised to submit to a verdict for the reduced amount rather than incur the risk and expense of a new trial. Nor do I doubt that the power (if it exists) would be convenient, and in the most eases do substantial justice and save expense.” In Fleming v. Bank of New Zealand, 1900 A. C. 577, the jury returned a verdict for the plain*564tiff for 2,000 pounds. The judicial committee of the Privy Council decided “that a new-trial ought to he directed unless the plaintiff consented that the damages shall be reduced to five hundred pounds,” etc.; that is, they used a remittitur in their final judgment. Watt v. Watt in outlawing remittiturs was at variance not only with Belt v. Lawes, and with the commonly accepted practice of many years, but also with the considered judgment of the Privy Council in the then recent Fleming Case, supra. It also ran counter, as Lord Davey frankly admitted, to practical convenience in doing substantial justice and saving expense. However, as Watt v. Watt does not represent the law in the federal courts, it is unnecessary to extend the discussion.
As the propriety of remittiturs in the federal courts is established (Tevis v. Ryan, 233 U. S. 273, 34 S. Ct. 481, 58 L. Ed. 957, where judgment entered on a remittitur was affirmed; Denny v. Pironi, 141 U. S. 121, 126, 11 S. Ct. 966, 35 L. Ed. 657; Arkansas Valley Land & Cattle Co. v. Mann, supra; Copley v. Ball, 176 F. 682, 692 [C. C. A.] plaintiff allowed remit as to land in ejectment suit) it seems to me to follow that the order appealed from was not beyond the discretionary power of the trial judge. Clark v. Henshaw Motor Co., 246 Mass. 386, 140 N. E. 593; Adamson v. County of Los Angeles, 52 Cal. App. 125, 198 P. 52. The way in which he dealt with the matter was direct and accomplished practical justice. These are weighty considerations on a question of practice, and ought not to be disregarded except for compelling reasons. I do not think that the Constitution prohibits improvements in the machinery for administering justice or restricts our procedural methods to those in use in the days of hand looms and sailing ships. That view Was strongly, and I believe rightly, repudiated in the Arkansas Valley Land & Cattle Co. Case, supra, and Walker v. New Mexico & Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 165 U. S. 593, 596, 17 S. Ct. 421, 41 L. Ed. 837. Cases like Shanahan v. Boston & Northern Street Railway, 193 Mass. 412, 79 N. E. 751, in which the finding of the jury on liability was disregarded by the trial judge in an effort to impose his views on the parties, have no bearing on the present question. Here the trial judge accepted the jury’s verdict as to liability. The part of his order which is objected to relates only to damages. The law recognizes a distinction between questions of liability and amount of damages; e. g., agreements for arbitrating the former were at one time regarded as against public policy, but agreements for the arbitration of damages were held valid. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries judges appear to have exercised great freedom in dealing with damages found by a jury.' See Buller's Nisi Prius (7th Ed., 1817) p. 21 (a). On the historical aspects of the question, the cases, stated in this book and in the earlier edition of it dated 1772, wherein damages in tort found by a jury were increased by judicial order, are interesting. They tend to support the views of the Court of Appeals and the Privy Council, and of the United States Supreme Court, as to the discretionary powers of the court over damages at common law. See Watt v. Watt, 1905 A. C. 115, at 119. In my opinion, the judgment appealed from ought to be affirmed.