Court Opinion

ID: 9865113
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:24:08.47069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:23.534037
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Bouck,
dissenting.
I cannot approve the judgment of reversal or the opinion of the court herein.
That portion of the bill of exceptions which contains the evidence received in the district court amounts to 761 folios. The majority opinion employs less than ten folios in what at first glance appears to be an attempt to epitomize that voluminous evidence. It is obviously not an epitome, however, but a catalogue of detached bits of testimony, each one lifted out of its proper context, and necessarily omits many other parts of the testimony. My study of the entire evidence has brought the conviction that the omitted matters fairly supply a sufficient and substantial basis for the resulting* jury verdict awarding $4,400 damages to the plaintiff, now defendant in error. This court has — unwarrantably, I think — permitted itself to supersede the jury as the fact-finding* body herein.
Among the Colorado cases that may be perused with profit, particularly on the question of malice in actions for alienation of affections, are: Bradbury v. Brooks, 82 Colo. 133, 257 Pac. 359; McAllister v. McAllister, 72 Colo. 28, 209 Pac. 788; Williams v. Williams, 20 Colo. 51, 37 Pac. 614.
The psychological analysis offered by the opinion to explain the verdict of the jury is hardly called for. In dealing with a jury verdict, the reviewing court is not *327required to conjecture the mental processes of the jurors. Certain it is that, not having* seen or heard the living witnesses, we are not in so good a position as the jurors, who did see and hear them, to judge of the weight and sufficiency of the witnesses’ testimony. Under sound fundamental principles of our American jurisprudence, this court is hound by the jury’s fact findings. I fear that the rejection of these findings, by reversal of the judgment with directions to dismiss the case, works an irretrievable miscarriage of justice. At the very least, this court should have granted the right of a new trial.
For the reasons indicated, I respectfully dissent.