Court Opinion

ID: 9685251
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:27:08.201436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:03.630540
License: Public Domain

SHENK, J.
I dissent.
I am convinced that the plaintiff’s version of how the accident happened is contrary to the laws of nature and inherently improbable. To be expected to believe that the plaintiff could have stumbled over a shallow depression 13 feet from the westerly rail of the track and been pitched forward and under the train on that track so that his hand was crushed on the easterly rail and his body not injured while under the moving train, taxes credulity to the breaking point. On the other hand, there were reasonable inferences from sufficient credible evidence, some of it introduced by the plaintiff, that he proceeded from the park on the easterly side of the tracks as the train was moving in front of the station; that he tripped on a rail on the easterly side of the train where he had no right to be, and fell, whereupon his hand was caught on the easterly rail under the moving train. To my mind this was the only factual situation on which to base a conclusion and with no resulting liability on the defendant. It should lie uneasy on the conscience of a court to permit a jury’s verdict to stand which must necessarily be based on the incredible theory of the facts advanced by the plaintiff.
Furthermore, I cannot agree with the conclusion that the jury’s verdict of $60,000 is not so grossly disproportionate to a sum reasonably warranted by the facts as to shock the sense of justice. In my opinion the size of the verdict, notwithstanding a deflated purchasing power of the dollar, and the youth and marital status of the plaintiff, is so dispropor*189tionate to the loss of a hand as to raise a presumption that it was the result of passion and prejudice.
TRAYNOR, J.
It is my opinion that although the accident as described by plaintiff is not outside the realm of possibility, his version, which is that of an interested and impeached witness, involves so extraordinary and improbable a sequence of events that without corroboration it does not warrant belief by a reasonable jury. I cannot agree, therefore, that a reasonable jury could find it more probable than not that plaintiff sustained his injury as a result of the defendant’s negligence.
Appellant’s petition for a rehearing was denied July 29, 1948. Shenk, J., and Traynor, J., voted for a rehearing.