Court Opinion

ID: 9640041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:56:00.60499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:25.605496
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in holding that there was evidence to support the verdict, and that it was not an error to refuse to take a special verdict along with the general verdict. I also concur in thinking that it would be desirable to take special verdicts more often. True, it would often expose the general verdict to defeat by showing how irrational had been the operation of the juror’s minds. However, like my brother Frank, I am not among those who appear to esteem the system just because it gives rein to the passional element of our nature, however inevitably that may enter all our conclusions. I should like to subject a verdict, as narrowly as was practical, to a review which should make it in fact, what we very elaborately pretend that it should be; a decision based upon law. In criminal prosecutions there may be, and in my judgment there are, other considerations which intervene to make such an attempt undesirable.