22 La. Ann. 603 | La. | 1870
The plaintiff sues to recover damages for personal injuries sustained through the negligence of a driver of one of the defendant’s cars. It appears that, being a passenger, she gave the usual signal for stopping, and the car was stopped; but while she was
The defense was a general denial. The cause was tried by a jury, who rendered a verdict in favor of plaintiff for six thousand dollars, and after an ineffectual effort for a new trial the defendant has appealed.
The testimony in the record fully sustains the verdict. It happened that two medical men were in the car at the time of the accident. Both saw it and agree as to its cause — the gross carelessness of the driver, which one attributes to intoxication. One of these witnesses the defendant sought to contradict by showing that he had elsewhere made a different statement of the circumstances; but there was no attempt to shake the testimony of the other, and the latter corroborates the former in every important particular. The driver was not produced. Whether he was unaware of the accident or sought to escape blame by a rapid retreat, we are unable to say. We only learn that he did not stop after the plaintiff was thrown down, but drove swiftly on, and was soon out of sight in the dusk of the evening.
The defendant reserved two bills of exceptions to the charge of the judge below, raising questions of the effect of article 2299 of the Civil Code; of the amount of care which the defendant is, by law, required to exercise; and as to whether vindictive damages have any place in the law of Louisiana where a principal is made liable only for the neglect of his agent. These questions are interesting and important, and the last has been a subject of animated discussion in this court in former years. But we do not conceive it necessary to pass on them as presented in this case. Under our system of appeals the whole testimony is brought up and the entire case is before us on its merits. When, therefore, as in this case, the pleadings and evidence fully sustain the verdict, it would be a vain tiling to remand the cause merely that another jury might render a verdict precisely similar under different notions of the liabilities of carriers. We do not say that the charge excepted to was erroneous, but, even admitting that it was, we may say, in the language of the court in Lowe v. Korner, 4 La., 76, “ this court has never gone so far as to remand a cause for speculative errors on the part of the judge who tried it, which had
Judgment affirmed.
Rehearing refused.