Court Opinion

ID: 9857252
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 14:23:33.851856+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:20.698448
License: Public Domain

Case, J.
(concurring). I agree that a jury verdict may be impeached as contrary to the weight of the evidence when, and only when, it is so strongly against the weight as to show mistake, passion, prejudice or partiality; this, because of the virtue imputed by our Constitution to a jury verdict. But, as I read the majority opinion in the light of the record, it abandons the principle that an application to the trial court for a new trial is within the discretion of that court and that the decision thereon may not be disturbed except for an abuse of that discretion. That rule is very old and of wide acceptance. The universality of it may be gathered from the text and the citation of the cases in 46 C. J. p. 406 § 465 and 5 C. J. S. p. 516, Title Appeal and Error § 1619.
There is sound reason for the rule. There can be no doubt that the atmosphere of a trial and of the courtroom generally is better known to the trial judge than can possibly be reflected by any printed report of the proceedings. If the record discloses legal error, the party may go direct to an appellate court; if he prefers to make an application to the trial judge for a new trial, he should be held to the decision there rendered unless the decision is so- out of line as to constitute, in the opinion of the appellate court, an abuse of discretion.
There seems to have developed a reluctance on the part of our Hew Jersey appellate courts to make that holding lest perchance it be disagreeable to the trial judge. Why. that feeling should exist, I do not know. Everyone conversant with court proceedings knows what the expression “abuse of *214discretion” means and that there is nothing more reproachful in it than there is in a finding that the trial court committed harmful error. In any event, judges have for generations borne up bravely under that castigation and are still, almost everywhere, including the federal courts, enduring it with composure. I deem it much more hurtful to say that we no longer trust the trial judge with a field of discretion in which he may move without reversal. But the language need not be retained; a substitute phrase could easily be coined. The important thing is to preserve an old and useful phase of jurisprudence—the discretion of the trial judge.
Some of the law was stated in Nelson v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 128 N. J. L. 46 (E. & A. 1941), voted by a unanimous court and followed in Natale v. Automobile Finance Co., 133 N. J. L. 253 (E. & A. 1945); Hartley v. Newark Morning Ledger Co., 134 N. J. L. 217 (E. & A. 1946); Salvato v. New Jersey Asphalt & Paving Co., 135 N. J. L. 185 (E. & A. 1946); Batts v. Joseph Newman, Inc., 3 N. J. 503 (1950), and other eases.
I am voting to affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division because I consider that the amount of the verdict when compared with the evidence clearly indicates that the jury was moved by mistake, passion, prejudice or partiality and that the trial court exercised an abuse of discretion in not granting a new trial for that reason; and, when I say that, I am saying nothing else than that the court’s ruling went far enough from the mark to become reversible error.
For affirmance—Chief Justice Vanderbilt, and Justices Case, Heher, Oliphant, Wacheneeld, Burling and Ackerson—7.
For reversal—None.