Gunn v. Union R. Co.

• Decision Date: 15 July 1905
• Citation: Gunn v. Union R. Co., 27 R. I. 320, 62 A. 118 (R.I. 1905)
• Parties: GUNN v. UNION R. CO.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

62 A. 118

27 R.I. 320

GUNN

v. UNION R. CO.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 15, 1905.

Action by Thomas Gunn against the Union Railroad Company. Heard on motion of plaintiff to vacate an order directing the cause to be remanded with direction to enter judgment for defendant (58 Atl. 452). Motion denied.

Argued before DOUGLAS, C. J., and DUBOIS, BLODGETT, JOHNSON, and PARKHURST, JJ.

Charles E. Gorman, for plaintiff. Henry W. Hayes, Frank T. Easton, Lefferts S. Hoffman, and Alonzo R. Williams, for defendant.

BLODGETT, J. After the filing of the opinion in this case, directing the cause to be remanded to the common pleas division with direction to enter judgment for the defendant (26 R. I. 112, 58 Atl. 452), the plaintiff has filed a motion of which the following is a literal transcript: "The defendant comes and moves to vacate the order of the court directing a verdict to be entered for the defendant because said court has no jurisdiction to enter such order and because said order deprives the plaintiff of his property without due process of law in violation of section 10 of article 1 of the Constitution of the state and of the provisions of the United States wherein a state is prohibited from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the law. Charles E. Gorman, C. Woodbury Gorman, Attorneys for the Plaintiff." Assuming that the word "defendant" as first used is inadvertently used in place of the word "plaintiff" to designate the moving party, and further assuming that the word "verdict" is inadvertently used in the motion instead of the word "judgment," we proceed to a consideration of the constitutional questions raised therein, observing that the case is now before the full court only on such questions, even if the opinion of the court supra were not res adjudicata as to the statutory authority for the action of the court.

At the argument, as well as at the reargument made necessary by certain changes in the membership of the court, the sole ground urged by the plaintiff that the act in question was unconstitutional was that he was deprived of his property without due process of law, inasmuch as the order of the court directing the entry of judgment, because of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, was an infringement of his constitutional right of trial by jury. The constitutional provision as to trials by jury is not the same in all the states. Thus, in the Constitution of Maryland (1867), the following provision occurs: "Art. 5. That the inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the common law of England and the trial by jury according to the course of that law." In the Constitution of Rhode Island (article 1, § 15) it is thus expressed: "The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate." In strictness of construction this is an entirely separate provision from those provisions of the Constitution set forth in the record; but inasmuch as both parties have chosen to consider this provision as ancillary to the other, and inasmuch as we are advised that the same question has been raised in other cases now pending and awaiting our decision in the case at bar, we shall consider the question thus broadly presented as though it were a question of the constitutional power of the court to set aside a verdict in a civil case for insufficiency of evidence and to enter judgment thereafter, without remanding the cause for a new trial.

In its federal aspects the question thus raised is resolved adversely to the plaintiff by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Maxwell v. Dow (1899) 176 U. S. 581-594, 20 Sup. Ct. 448, 44 L. Ed. 597, where the court says: "In Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U. S. 90, 23 L. Ed. 678, it was held that a trial by jury in suits at common law in the state courts was not a privilege or immunity belonging to a person as a citizen of the United States, and protected, therefore, by the fourteenth amendment. The action was tried without a jury by virtue of an act of the Legislature of the state of Louisiana. The plaintiff in error objected to such a trial, alleging that he had a constitutional right to a trial by jury, and that the statute was void to the extent that it deprived him of that right. The objection was overruled. Mr. Chief Justice Waite, in delivering the opinion of the court, said: 'By article 7 of the amendments it is provided that "in suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.". This, as has been many times decided, relates only to trials in the courts of the United States. Edwards v. Elliott, 21 Wall. 532, 557, 22 L. Ed. 487. The states, so far as this amendment is concerned, are left to regulate trials in their own courts in their own way. A trial by jury in suits at common law pending in the state courts is not, therefore, a privilege or immunity of national citizenship, which the states are forbidden by the fourteenth amendment to abridge. A state cannot deprive a person of his property without due process of law; but this does not necessarily imply that all trials in the state courts affecting the property of persons must be by jury. This requirement of the Constitution is met if the trial is had according to the settled course of judicial proceedings. Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 280, 15 L. Ed. 372. Due process of law is process due according to the law of the land. This process in the states is regulated by the law of the state. Our power over that law is only to determine whether it is in conflict with the supreme law of the land—that is to say with the Constitution and laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof—or with any treaty made under the authority of the United States.' This ease shows that the fourteenth amendment, in forbidding a state to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, does not include among them the right of trial by jury in a civil case in a state court, although the right to such a trial in the federal courts is specially secured to all persons in the cases mentioned in the seventh amendment."

This language is, of course, conclusive as to the scope of the provisions of the Constitution of United States as affecting the guaranty of jury trial in civil actions by the states. If further discussion of the meaning and effect of the words "law of the land" and "due process of law" were required than is contained in Gunn v. Union R. R. Co., 23 R. I. 301, 49 Atl. 1004, there may be added this language of Mr. Justice Bradley in Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. p. 31, 25 L. Ed. 989: "We might go still further, and say, with undoubted truth, that there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent any state from adopting any system of laws or judicature it sees fit for all or any part of its territory. If the state of New York, for example, should see fit to adopt the civil law and its method of procedure for New York City and the surrounding counties, and the common law and its method of procedure for the rest of the state, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent its doing so. * * * Where part of a state is thickly settled, and another part has but few inhabitants, it may be desirable to have different systems of judicature for the two portions—trial by jury, in one, for example, and not in the other. * * * If a Mexican state should be acquired by treaty and added to an adjoining state, or part of a state, in the United States, and the two should be erected into a new state, it cannot be doubted that such new state might allow the Mexican laws and judicature to continue unchanged in the one portion, and the common law and its corresponding judicature in the other portion. Such an arrangement would not be prohibited by any fair construction of the fourteenth amendment." And in The Justices v. Murray, 76 U. S. 278, 19 L. Ed. 658, it is further said that, inasmuch as the first ten amendments to the Constitution were limitations upon the power of the federal government and not upon the states, "it follows that the seventh amendment (relating to trial by jury) could not be invoked in a state court to prohibit it from re-examining, on a writ of error, facts that had been tried by a jury in the court below."

It is, of course, obvious that the question here presented is restricted to an inquiry as to the power of the court in civil cases only. The provision of our Constitution as to criminal cases differs, indeed, from the provision of the Constitution of the United States and from the constitutional provision of a great majority of the other states in that it contains no reference to former jeopardy, and is as follows: Article 1, § 7: "* * * No person shall after an acquittal be tried for the same offense." This provision in State v. Lee, 10 R. I. 495, was properly held by this court to mean "that no person who has once been fairly acquitted by a jury upon a proceeding purely criminal can again be put upon trial without his own consent." The inherent power of the court in the absence of a constitutional provision in that behalf is forcibly illustrated in the recent case of State v. Lee (1894) 65 Conn. 271, 30 Atl. 1110, 27 L. R. A. 498, 48 Am. St. Rep. 202, in which the case is thus stated by the court: "The defendant was indicted for the crime of murder in the second degree, was acquitted upon trial to the jury, and this is an appeal by the state, in the nature of a motion for a new trial, on the ground of alleged errors in the charge of the court and in the admission and exclusion of evidence," and a new trial was granted thereon, the court saying (page 272 of 65 Conn., page 1111 of 30 Atl. [27 L. R. A. 498, 48 Am. St. Rep. 202]): "The principle of finality is essential, but not more essential than the principle of justice. A final...