Court Opinion

ID: 3619469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 00:01:39.067627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:00:22.150359
License: Public Domain

I concur in the opinion of Judge O'BRIEN. I take this occasion to remark: The unanimous decision of the Appellate Division, that there is evidence tending to support the verdict, is based upon the assumption that that court rules correctly upon the question of law applicable to the case. Both law and fact must support a verdict to give it validity; whence it follows that lacking either support it must fail. And where the supporting force of the law has been duly challenged during the trial, as in this case, the question of law is reviewable here, although the question of fact is not. The opposite doctrine seems to rest upon the theory that it is inconceivable that where the evidence supports a verdict, it can be reviewed upon the law without also reviewing it upon the facts. Such is not the view of the Constitution, for it does not preclude a review of the verdict or finding, but only of the unanimous decision of the Appellate Division that there is evidence supporting or tending to sustain it. It regards such decision as upon a question of law, otherwise there would be no need to exclude it from our jurisdiction to review questions of law. It excludes no other question of law, although it enables the legislature to do so by enabling it to further restrict our jurisdiction.
Now, a review of the question whether there is evidence supporting or tending to sustain a verdict or finding is not a review of that other question of law, namely, what judgment does the law require upon the settled facts. We may concede that if the course of the trial has been such that we cannot tell by an inspection of the record whether the facts as found require the legal result which the verdict declares, we have no question of law presented to us; but that is a mere question of practice. If, by an inspection of the record, we can see just what the facts are that have been settled, and also see that the question of law as to the verdict which the law requires thereon was distinctly presented, then, I think, we have jurisdiction to review it. Such is this case.
I submit that a party should not lose his right of review of a question of law essential to his protection by a tribunal *Page 181 
established to review it, not because of any omission or fault of his own, but because the question of law which ought to be reviewed is pronounced by the same verdict and decision which also settles the facts.