Piru Citrus Ass'n v. Williams
Decision Date | 06 February 1950 |
Citation | 95 Cal.App.2d 911,214 P.2d 426 |
Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Parties | PIRU CITRUS ASS'N v. WILLIAMS et ux. Civ. 17094. |
James C. Hollingsworth and Dan R. Holt, Ventura, for appellants.
John A. Calvin, Fillmore, and William T. Selby, Ventura, for respondent.
Appeal by defendants from an order granting a new trial in an action for liquidated damages for breach of a cooperative marketing agreement.
The cause was tried by a jury which rendered a verdict for defendants. Thereafter, upon motion of plaintiff, the court made the following order granting a new trial:
'Prior to the purchase of the stock, defendants' predecessor owner of the property had been a shareholder in the plaintiff Association and had delivered his fruit to the Association as such shareholder.
'The stock purchase was represented by defendant, Clyde Williams, signing an original copy of the bylaws and a promissory note for a balance of $430.00 due upon the stock by the former owner of the real property. This was January 4, 1947. The stock certificate was issued on the same day and was retained by the Association as collateral security for the payment of the note.
'The defendant testified that he did not read either the note or the bylaws, and that at the time he signed them he stated to the gentleman who prepared the documents for the Association, 'You are not going to handle this fruit. He further testified that the reason he signed the bylaws and the note was that he wanted to salvage something out of the stock but that otherwise he had no use for it.
'On December 27, 1947, the defendant paid the balance due on the promissory note and the certificate of stock was delivered to him by the Association.
Defendants appeal from this order. Plaintiff appeals from an order denying its motion for a directed verdict, from an order denying its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and from the judgment.
The defendants' principal point is that the order granting the new trial does not specify insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict as a ground upon which the new trial was granted; hence it must be conclusively presumed that it was not based upon that ground, and as there was no other valid ground upon which it could be based, it must be reversed. Code Civ.Proc., sec. 657.
We think it sufficiently appears from the order that it was based upon the ground of insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict. The statute does not require that the order specify insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict in any particular words or language. If the language used is susceptible of being interpreted as tantamount to granting a new trial on account of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, or if it may be inferred from the language used that such was the ground upon which the order was made, it is uniformly held to have been based upon that ground. Where the nature of the order itself necessarily implies that the trial court deemed it necessary to reexamine the facts, a statement in the order that the evidence is insufficient is not essential. When the order granting the motion goes beyond a mere general order (a new trial is granted) and uses any language that reasonably can be construed as including insufficiency of the evidence, the language will be interpreted as including that ground.
The following cases enunciate the foregoing rules and hold that the orders specified were based upon the ground of the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict: Griffey v. Pacific Electric Ry. Co., 58 Cal.App. 509, 512, 209 P. 45, 46 ( ); Beckley v. Harris, 84 Cal.App. 557, 558, 258 P. 428, 429 (); to the same effect, Lewis v. Southern California Edison Co., 116 Cal.App. 44, 49, 2 P.2d 419; Lucerne Country Club v. Beal, 21 Cal.App.2d 121, 123, 68 P.2d 408, 409 (); Secreto v. Carlander, 35 Cal.App.2d 361, 363, 95 P.2d 476, 477 (...
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