Morache v. Greenberg

• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: MALTBIE, Chief Justice.
• Citation: Morache v. Greenberg, 116 Conn. 549, 165 A. 684 (Conn. 1933)
• Decision Date: 18 April 1933
• Parties: MORACHE v. GREENBERG et al.

165 A. 684

116 Conn. 549

MORACHE v. GREENBERG et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

April 18, 1933

Appeal from Superior Court, New Haven County; John Richards Booth Judge.

Action by Oswald Morache against Samuel Greenberg and others to recover damages for personal injuries resulting from an alleged assault on plaintiff by the defendants. Judgment for plaintiff on trial to the court, and defendants appeal.

No error.

Alexander Winnick, of New Haven, for appellants.

Cornelius J. Danaher, of Meriden, for appellee.

Argued before MALTBIE, C.J., and HAINES, HINMAN, BANKS, and AVERY, JJ.

MALTBIE, Chief Justice.

The plaintiff brought this action to recover for injuries suffered by reason of an assault committed upon him by the defendants pursuant to a conspiracy to that end, and from a judgment in his favor the defendants have appealed. No corrections in or additions to the finding which would be material to the issues in the case can be made, and that finding sustains the judgment rendered. The defendants' principal claims of error present a number of rulings upon evidence. The claimed errors in admitting certain questions over the defendants' objections need not be considered, because the finding does not show the answers made to them, if any. Donoghue v. Smith, 114 Conn. 64, 157 A. 415. The question asked upon cross-examination of a police officer called by the plaintiff as to what he understood from a conversation with one of the defendants was clearly inadmissible. Swayne v. Felice, 84 Conn. 147, 150, 79 A. 62. The finding states that certain matters excluded as not proper cross-examination of one of the defendants called by the plaintiff were later given in evidence by him when called as their witness, and the rulings could have done no harm. The testimony that the plaintiff, while in the hospital as a result of the assault, was fed through a tube as a result of an injury to his jaw was fairly within the scope of the injuries alleged; the complaint stated that the plaintiff suffered a fracture of the jawbone, and the fact that he had to be fed in this way was an incident of that injury just as much as the other steps taken in the reduction and curing of the fracture. The court was correct in excluding the characterization given by one witness of certain letters not in evidence as threatening and blackmailing.

The defendants claimed that the plaintiff had been unduly familiar with the wife of the defendant Greenberg, who was the sister of the other defendants, and they assign as error the exclusion by the court of certain questions asked in connection with this contention. These facts, if true, would not of course have justified the assault. We allow proof of provocation in certain circumstances in mitigation of damages, but this mitigation goes only to exemplary damages and not to those which are compensatory; the circumstances to be considered are such as tend to show that the assault was the result of sudden impulse or passion and to rebut any claim that the defendant was actuated by premeditated malice and the provocation must be so recent, or at least have come to the knowledge of...