Robinson v. Randall

• Decision Date: 30 September 1876
• Citation: 82 Ill. 521,1876 WL 10245
• Parties: WILLIAM ROBINSON et al.v.OLIVIA J. RANDALL.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

82 Ill. 521

1876 WL 10245 (Ill.)

WILLIAM ROBINSON et al.

v.OLIVIA J. RANDALL.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

September Term, 1876.

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of Bureau county; the Hon. EDWIN S. LELAND, Judge, presiding.

Mr. J. J. HERRON, and Mr. JOHN SCOTT, for the appellants.

Messrs. HENDERSON & TRIMBLE, for the appellee.

Mr. JUSTICE CRAIG delivered the opinion of the Court:

This was an action brought by appellee, a married woman, to recover damages sustained in her means of support in consequence of the sale by appellants of spirituous liquors to her husband, who was in the habit of using intoxicating liquors to excess. A trial of the cause before a jury resulted in a verdict and judgment in favor of appellee, for $350, to reverse which appellants appealed. The first error complained of is the decision of the court in overruling appellants' challenge, for cause, of the jurors, Bagden and Mercer. Bagden, on his voir dire, said he “had a prejudice against men engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors; should be governed by the evidence and the law; don't know but what I would give defendants the same kind of a trial as in any other case.”

Under our statute, the sale of spirituous liquors, under certain circumstances, is a crime for which a party may be indicted, fined and imprisoned. The mere fact, therefore, that a juror may have a prejudice against crime, does not disqualify him as a juror. A juror may be prejudiced against larceny, or burglary, or murder, and yet such fact would not in the least disqualify him from sitting upon a jury to try some person who might be charged with one of these crimes.

As to the other juror, we do not regard him competent. He said he had great prejudice against the traffic; could not give the testimony of a person engaged in the business the same weight he could a man engaged in other business. Under the law, the defendants were competent witnesses, and a juror who was so prejudiced that he could not give their evidence that weight which it was entitled to receive, could not be regarded as a person standing indifferent between the parties, free from all bias which might swerve his judgment from all impartiality.

But conceding that the court erred in not sustaining the challenge of the juror, it was an error that did appellants no harm. The jurors were challenged peremptorily, and excused, and appellants did not exhaust their challenges in the selection of the entire jury before whom the cause was tried, therefore appellants were not injured by the ruling of the court; and, as was held in Winnesheik Ins. Co. v. Schneller, 60 Ill. 465, we can not reverse for an error that worked no injury. If appellants, in consequence of the ruling of the court, had exhausted their peremptory challenges, and had been compelled to accept a juror whom they might have otherwise rejected, the rule might be otherwise, but this record does not disclose such a state of facts.

It is also claimed by appellants that the verdict is contrary to the evidence. While it is true, upon some points the evidence is...