Hill v. West End St. R. Co.
| Decision Date | 07 March 1893 |
| Parties | HILL v. WEST END ST. RY. CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
John D. Long and A.E. Clary, for plaintiff.
M.F Dickinson, Jr., and Wm. B. Sprout, for defendant.
There is no sound reason why the familiar doctrine that a party may contradict, though not impeach, his own witness, should not if the circumstances are consistent with honesty and good faith, be applied when he is himself the witness; nor, under the same circumstances, is there any reason why, to prove material facts denied by his own testimony, he may not rely on the testimony of witnesses called by the adverse party. In such a case counsel may properly argue that the jury should find in accordance with part of his client's testimony, and in other particulars should reject it, and find in accordance with the testimony of other witnesses, on whatever side called. In other words, the law recognizes the fact that parties, as well as other witnesses, may honestly mistake the truth, and requires juries to find the facts by weighing all the testimony, whatever may be its source. It is rarely that two persons relate alike the same occurrence; and, in cases of accidental injury, it is not unusual for the person injured to correctly perceive and accurately remember some of the circumstances, and to be unable to give a correct statement of all. Even when witnesses are found to have deliberately testified falsely in some material particular, the jury are not required to reject the whole of their uncorroborated testimony; but may credit such portions as they deem worthy of belief. Com. v Wood, 11 Gray, 86, 89, 93; Com. v. Billings, 97 Mass. 405. They are to weigh all the evidence, and, while they may not pervert or distort it by rejecting integral parts of a statement, they may accept or reject each distinct statement. They may thus find proved a state of facts to which, as a whole, no single witness has testified, and which in some particular is contrary to the account given by every individual witness. If in this way, or otherwise, they arrive at a verdict unsupported by the evidence, or contrary to its weight, the power to set the verdict aside is in the court, and is the remedy provided; but the court has no right to instruct them that there is no evidence of a fact which can fairly be inferred from all the evidence, although contrary to some portion of...
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