Putney v. Lehigh Truck Equipment Corp.
| Decision Date | 07 May 1958 |
| Citation | 141 A.2d 482,145 Conn. 731 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | Anne G. PUTNEY v. LEHIGH TRUCK EQUIPMENT CORPORATION. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut |
Gregory C. Willis, Bridgeport, for appellant (defendant).
Louis M. Altman, Stamford, for appellee (plaintiff).
Before BALDWIN, DALY, KING and MURPHY, JJ., and ALCORN, Superior Court Judge.
In this action claiming damages for personal injuries sustained in an automobile collision, the plaintiff recovered a verdict of $12,000. Liability was admitted, and the sole error assigned is the court's refusal to set aside the verdict as excessive.
The record leaves much to be desired. For no apparent reason an extensive finding was made. The action of the court on a motion to set aside a verdict is to be tested by the evidence. The finding serves no purpose. Practice Book, § 416. Furthermore, the assignment of errors should have been filed with the appeal. Id., § 388; Maltbie, Conn.App.Proc., § 125.
Both parties have printed extensive portions of the testimony as to damages. This imposed a wholly unjustified burden on this court. A narrative statement with a few short selected excerpts from the testimony would have been the proper procedure. Practice Book, § 448.
The evidence was analyzed with more than ordinary care in the memorandum of decision of the trial court denying the defendant's motion to set aside the verdict. It pointed out that over $2000 of the verdict could reasonably be accounted for as compensation for special damages. That the court was applying the correct rule in reaching its decision denying the motion is apparent from the memorandum, which cited Slabinski v. Dix, 138 Conn. 625, 628, 88 A.2d 115, and Varley v. Motyl, 139 Conn. 128, 132, 90 A.2d 869, 32 A.L.R.2d 1439. We add that its denial of the motion is entitled to great weight. Fairbanks v. State, 143 Conn. 653, 660, 124 A.2d 893.
It is unnecessary to enter into a detailed recital of the evidence. The defendant's two main claims will be briefly discussed. The first claim, in effect, was that there was no objective or clinical evidence of the plaintiff's more serious claimed injuries. We know of no rule, nor has the defendant cited authority for any, which excludes, as an element of damage, an injury merely because it is not clinically or objectively demonstrable. That a diagnosis is based solely on subjective complaints often results in a failure by the trier to credit it. Here, however, the verdict indicates that the...
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Healy v. White
...adequately admonish Shaywitz that he was to answer only in the realm of reasonable medical probability; Putney v. Lehigh Truck Equipment Corporation,145 Conn. 731, 732-33, 141 A.2d 482; but a proper foundation had been established for the question by evidence of Brian's continued epileptic ......
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Cooke v. United Aircraft Corp.
...excludable as an element of damage 'merely because it is not clinically or objectively demonstrable.' Putney v. Lehigh Truck Equipment Corporation, 145 Conn. 731, 732, 141 A.2d 482, 483. The defendants claim, and the doctors agree, that the disabling injury in this case, or the condition wh......
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Lupak v. Karalekas
...a memorandum of decision explaining its refusal to set aside the verdict, as was done, for instance, in Putney v. Lehigh Truck Equipment Corporation, 145 Conn. 731, 732, 141 A.2d 482, and Pischitto v. Waldron, supra, 147 Conn. 174, 158 A.2d 171. Even without such memorandum, however, the co......
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Callender v. Lakewood Realty Co.
...its function in passing upon the motion.' Lupak v. Karalekas, 147 Conn. 432, 433, 162 A.2d 180, 181; see Putney v. Lehigh Truck Equipment Corporation, 145 Conn. 731, 732, 141 A.2d 482. There was evidence in the record from which the jury could have found these operative facts: For a period ......