Court Opinion

ID: 9938979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-09 19:04:21.343736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:34.330823
License: Public Domain

A word or two regarding the amorphous scintilla rule.
To assume that this rule serves any useful purpose in the law is to engage in the most chimerical of suppositions. To at once require a case to be submitted to a jury's consideration if there be a gleam, a spark, a glimmer, of evidence to support a theory of recovery, and then to require that the trial court set aside a verdict supported only by that scintilla, seems to me a gross anomaly and ridiculous dissipation of the time and energy of our judicial system.
In all the thirty-four years of my presence at the bar, never have I observed a claim meriting recovery supported merely by ascintilla of evidence and if, per chance, a jury mistakenly rendered an award, then, of course, it was duly set aside.
Would it not be far better, from every standpoint, to require there be sufficient evidence to support a verdict before submitting a case to a jury authorized to render one?