67 Mo. App. 290 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1896
One Lynne, acting, or assuming to act, as agent for plaintiffs, sold some live stock belongr ing to them to the defendant. Plaintiffs, on hearing of the sale, denied Lynne’s agency and replevied the
The appellant states that the only question before this court is whether there was sufficient evidence to sustain the verdict of the jury. That statement is not fully satisfactory to us. The better way to. state the question would be whether the evidence tending to support the verdict of the jury is so clear and unequivocal in its support of the verdict as to place the verdict beyond the discretion of the trial court-to set it aside. There might be evidence sufficient, in our opinion, to support the verdict of a jury, if it met the approval of the trial judge, which would not be sufficient if it did not meet his approval. The trial court has more latitude to grant a new trial than has an appellate court; and a part of the reason, always at the bottom of an appellate court’s refusal to disturb a verdict, is that it has met the approval of the trial court. The trial court has a discretion in the matter of new trials which we will not interfere with, except in plain cases, and we will be slower to interfere where a new trial is granted than where it is refused. Longdon v. Kelly, 51 Mo. App. 572; Ensor v. Smith, 57 Mo. App. 584; Powell v. Railroad, 59 Mo. App. 335. In this ease the trial court has exercised its discretion as to a new trial and we can by no means say that the evidence, on the question of agency, is so overwhelmingly in favor of such agency as to render the court’s contrary view wholly unreasonable and an arbitrary abuse of discretion; The law
