Arey v. De Loriea, 18.

• Decision Date: 28 February 1893
• Docket Number: 18.
• Citation: 55 F. 323
• Parties: AREY et al. v. DE LORIEA et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

55 F. 323

AREY et al. v. DE LORIEA et al.

No. 18.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

February 28, 1893

Ralph W. Foster, (Joshua H. Millett, on the brief), for plaintiffs in error.

James Milton Hall, for defendants in error.

Before COLT and PUTNAM, Circuit Judges, and NELSON, District Judge.

NELSON District Judge.

At the trial in the court below the presiding judge read to the jury, as a part of his charge, an extract from the opinion of Judge Colt in McDonald v. Whitney, 24 F. 600. To this the defendants excepted. We are of opinion that this action of the court below was erroneous, and that the exception was well taken. The case of McDonald v. Whitney was a suit in equity in the circuit court for this district between different parties, brought for an alleged infringement of the McDonald patent. In the extract read to the jury Judge Colt gave his views upon the questions of law and fact involved in the case before him, and found expressly, as a matter of fact, that the gist of the McDonald invention, as described in claims 1 and 2, was the separation and adjustment of the rolls held together by spring pressure by means of a treadle and levers. The first and second claims were for combinations of feed rolls, supporting roll, and other mechanism, and the mechanical effect of these combinations, as well as the relations of the various elements to each other, and whether there was a substantial identity between them and the prior patents introduced in evidence, or with the machine used by the defendants involved questions of fact to be considered and passed upon by the jury. Upon these issues the fining of another tribunal in a case between other parties was not competent evidence and should not have been called to the attention of the jury. The presiding judge was careful to state that the jury were not to be controlled in their judgment by the opinion of Judge Colt, but were to consider his language as a statement of law only, and were to find the facts for themselves; but, in spite of these cautionary words, we think the jury were more than likely to give to the views of Judge Colt upon the issues before them a decisive effect in making up their verdict.

Other exceptions were taken by the defendants to the rulings of the court below, but as they do not present questions of importance, and may not arise on the second trial, we have not thought it necessary to consider them.

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