Herrick v. Waitt

• Decision Date: 21 June 1916
• Citation: 113 N.E. 205,224 Mass. 415
• Parties: HERRICK v. WAITT.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

224 Mass. 415

113 N.E. 205

HERRICK

v.WAITT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

June 21, 1916.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Lloyd E. White, Judge.

Action by Ralph M. Herrick against Albert H. Waitt. From a judgment for plaintiff from an order denying a new trial, defendant brings exceptions. Exceptions overruled.

John F. Ryan, of Boston, for plaintiff.

Chester W. Ford and E. Irving Smith, both of Boston, for defendant.

RUGG, C. J.

At the conclusion of the evidence the defendant presented thirty-seven requests for instructions. The judge stated that he should not read them to the jury, but should deliver his charge and thereafter counsel might, if they desired, call his attention to any instructions which they thought had not been given in substance.

This was correct practice. While of course a judge may read the requests to the jury with such comment as may be necessary in order to state the law correctly, ordinarily it is better and more effective to give a comprehensive charge stating plainly and forcibly the law pertinent to the issues raised. The purpose of a charge is to enable the jury to understand their duty clearly and to be enlightened as to the principles of law by which their action must be controlled. It should be adapted as a whole to the presentation of those principles in words easily understood by the man of ordinary intelligence. This end usually can be accomplished more effectively by the judge formulating a complete and unified statement either wholly in his own words or partly by quotation from decided cases, with such reference to the evidence as may be wise to render it practical as a guide to a just verdict, rather than by reading the detached expressions prepared as requests for instructions by counsel on one side or the other and liable to be colored by the necessary bias under which they are framed. Whitney v. Wellesley & Boston St. Ry., 197 Mass. 495, 502, 84 N. E. 95;Maxwell v. Mass. Title Ins. Co., 206 Mass. 197, 200, 92 N. E. 42;Commonwealth v. Dow, 217 Mass. 473, 483, 105 N. E. 995.

In the case at bar counsel for the defendant properly made no objection to this procedure. At the close of the charge he referred again to his requests and excepted to all of them not given in the charge. The judge refused to allow an exception in that form, saying that he was entitled to have his attention called to anything which counsel claimed he had not given, adding, ‘Now, take your own time about this.’ Thereupon the jury were seated and counsel went through his requests for rulings and after doing so, said, ‘I am content.’

This was not the taking of an exception. The colloquy means that, acting well within his right, the judge refused to allow the exception first stated. He might require any error in the charge or failure to cover every request to be pointed out to him so that it might be corrected. Commonwealth v. Costley, 118 Mass. 1, 22;Henderson v. Raymond Syndicate, 183 Mass. 443, 446, 67 N. E. 427. Counsel acceding to the soundness of this position, after examinine his requests anew, gave the judge to understand that he was satisfied...