41 Kan. 528 | Kan. | 1889
Opinion by
The defendant requested the court to submit to the jury for their answers special questions. Four of the questions the court refused to submit, which are as follows:
“Q,. No. 6. How much was the damage to the farm by reason of the necessity of crossing stock from one side to the other?
“Q,. No. 7. How much damage to the laud by reason of the inconvenience for farming and using and occupying such land, caused by the building of said railway through, over and across said land ?
“Q,. No. 8. How much damage to the land by reason of the ditches being cut on each side of defendant’s road-bed along the. line of said railway?
“Q,. No. 9. How much damage to the land of the plaintiff by reason of the embankments being thrown up along the line of said defendant’s railway?”
The plaintiff in error insists that these questions ought to have been submitted to the jury; that an issue was raised by the pleadings covering each of these questions, and that there was evidence offered to the jury upon each item of damage set out in the petition. Evidence was offered tending to establish all the allegations of the plaintiff’s petition, but no evidence was offered giving in detail the items of damage covered by these four questions which the court refused to submit; and if these questions had been submitted to the jury there was no basis from which they might have determined the accurate
“ How much was the damage to the plaintiff’s farm for the want of a crossing from the north to the south side of said railroad? A-ns..- For the lack of evidence, we, the jurors, can’t say.”
The defendant requested the court to require the jury to answer this question more definitely, which the court refused to do. This question was of the same character of the four that the court refused to give, and ought to have been included with them and excluded from the jury; and the jury gave such an answer to this question as they doubtless would have given to the other four had they been submitted to them. No evidence was offered or data given by which the jury could have intelligently answered these questions, and we see no error in the court’s refusal to require the jury to more definitely answer the question.
Defendant filed a motion for a new trial, and in support of that motion offered Thomas Rouse as a witness. Rouse was one of the jurymen that tried this cause. The question which the court refused to permit him to answer was as follows:
“I will ask you if it was not a matter of fact that you agreed on the general verdict first, and then answered the special interrogatories with a view of agreeing with your general verdict, without reference to any particular damage to auy particular part of the farm?”
It is therefore recommended that the judgment of the court below be affirmed.
By the Court: It is so ordered.