257 Mo. 470 | Mo. | 1914
The appellant seeks to recover damages for personal injury suffered by her in the city of St. Louis by falling through a cinder sidewalk on Brannon avenue. The cinder surface broke under her weight so that her foot went through into an excavation beneath it in such a manner as to seriously sprain her ankle. This occurred on January 4, 1908, and the ankle was still weak at the time of the trial, on March 14, 1910. There was much conflicting evidence as to her disability during the time intervening between the injury and the trial. The jury returned a verdict for $2000. The defendant in due time filed its motion for a new trial, stating among other grounds therefor the following:
“6. The court erred in overruling the demurrer to the evidence at the close of the whole case.
‘ ‘ 11. The amount of the verdict is excessive and is not supported or justified by the evidence.
“12. The verdict is the result of sympathy, passion and prejudice for the plaintiff on the part of the jury, and against the defendant.”
The trial court afterwards announced that it would sustain the motion and grant a new trial, unless the plaintiff should, within ten days thereafter, remit from said verdict the sum of eight hundred dollars.
In Morrell v. Lawrence, 203 Mo. 363, 381, this court applied the same principle in a case where the ground assigned as a reason for granting a new trial was that the verdict was excessive. We said: “That is a point peculiarly within the province of the trial
In 1773 the new trial seems to have got-well into harness as appears from Vernon v. Hankey, 2 Term Rep. 113. In the meantime, in 1757, Bright v. Eynon, 1 Burr. 391, came up in the King’s Bench, in which Lord Mansfield in a long and instructive opinion concurred in by the other justices and expressly indorsing Wood v. Gunston said: “Trails by jury, in civil causes, could not subsist now without a power somewhere to grant new trials.” His masterly argument in this opinion will well repay perusal. We have been
We think, with the court in that case, that the damages' accruing to one for criminal conversation with his wife are so largely personal and sentimental in their nature that judicial experience affords little or no aid in estimating them; so that the judged with respect to them, labors under all the difficulties that beset the jury. The most of the English cases cited by appellant are of that general character. Benson v. Frederick, 3 Burr. 1846, is., however, an action like this, for personal injury, and well repays notice in this connection. It was brought against the defendant, a
We can safely say that in England the practice of granting new trials at the discretion of the court for miscarriages of the jury, including the award of excessive damages, was firmly established in the eighteenth century, and has continued unabated. It is: a part of the common law of England adopted in the Territory of Missouri on the 19th.day of January, 1816, and which has during the entire period of our statehood been a canon of constitutional and statutory interpretation to which we have had frequent' recourse.
We have carefully read the numerous Missouri cases to which counsel for appellant has referred, and greatly appreciate the industry and learning he has brought to our aid. They all deal with the power and
It follows from what we have said that the order of the circuit court for the city of St. Louis granting a new trial must be affirmed, and the cause remanded for further proceedings.
The foregoing opinion of Brown, C., is adopted as the opinion of the court.