Occidental Consol. Min. Co. v. Comstock Tunnel Co.
Decision Date | 08 September 1903 |
Docket Number | 708. |
Citation | 125 F. 244 |
Parties | OCCIDENTAL CONSOLIDATED MIN. CO. v. COMSTOCK TUNNEL CO. |
Court | U.S. District Court — District of Nevada |
W. E F. Deal, for plaintiff.
W. T Baggett and F. M. Huffaker, for defendant.
It was claimed by defendant upon the motion for new trial that the court erred in instructing the jury as to the measure of damages which the plaintiff was entitled to recover, if the jury should find in its favor. I am of opinion that the instructions given upon this point were as favorable to the defendant, as the law would warrant. No exceptions were taken to the charge of the court as to the measure of damages. It is true that in one portion of the charge the word 'deduct' was inappropriately used, but it is manifest that, notwithstanding this inadvertence, or improper use of the word, the jury could not have been misled thereby. The only debatable point, to my mind, raised by the motion for new trial, is the claim made by defendant that the verdict of the jury is contrary to the instructions given by the court as to the measure of damages in this: that the amount is excessive, and cannot be sustained, because it cannot be accounted for or reached under any principle announced by the court in its charge.
Conceding that the amount of the verdict is larger than the court would have given if the cause had been tried by it without a jury this fact alone ought not to induce the court to grant a new trial. The matter of assessing the damages is, in cases of this character, exclusively within the province of the jury to determine, and the court should never interfere with the verdict, unless the amount is so excessive as to indicate passion and prejudice on the part of the jury, and cannot be accounted for in any other manner.
The court, in considering this question, must not lose sight of the general character of the action. If the principles of law announced by the court as to the right of the plaintiff to recover under the contracts are correct, then the jury had many things to consider in regard to the general damages that might be given. The suit was brought to recover actual damages in the sum of $27,292.25, and for general damages in the sum of $100,000, alleged to have been sustained by the breach of the contract on the part of the defendant, 'in that by the said wrongful acts of said defendant, and by the violation by it of said contracts, said plaintiff has been deprived of the right to drain, mine, and work its said claims on said Brunswick lode by means of said Sutro tunnel and said Zadig drift. ' If the verdict cannot be sustained by the evidence, it ought to be set aside, but if the jury kept within the limits of the evidence, and the verdict is not so strongly against the preponderance of the evidence as to indicate to the judicial mind that it was only reached through passion or prejudice or improper motives of any kind, and no error of law occurred, the verdict should not be interfered with by the court. Any other conclusion would impair the right to a trial by jury, guarantied to all litigants in actions of this character. Cramp & Sons S. & E.B. Co. v. Sloan (C.C.) 21 F. 561.
It may be that it would have been erroneous for the court to have instructed the jury that, in the event of finding a verdict for the plaintiff, interest should be added to the amount the plaintiff had expended; but I am not prepared to say that the jury, in the exercise of its discretion, had no right to consider the question of interest in assessing the damages. Lincoln v. Claflin, 7 Wall.132, 139, 19 L.Ed. 106. While the plaintiff could not recover remote or speculative damages based solely on conjecture, it is not deprived from recovering such general damages as are shown by the testimony to have been necessarily occasioned as the result of the breach, although the amount may not be made so absolutely clear and certain as to be easy of computation. As was said by the court in Wakeman v. Wheeler & Wilson M. Co., 101 N.Y.205, 209, 4 N.E.264, 266, 54 Am.Rep. 676:
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