State ex rel. Webster v. Knight
| Decision Date | 31 March 1870 |
| Parties | STATE ex rel. WEBSTER, Relator, v. JAMES K. KNIGHT, CIRCUIT JUDGE, Respondent. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Petition for mandamus.
E. W. Pattison, and Rankin & Hayden, for relator.
The verdict was a good one, and should have been recorded; and in entering judgment upon it the surplusage should have been stricken out, leaving that part which was a verdict upon the issue submitted to the jury. .)Hitchcock & Lubke, for respondent.
I. The verdict alleged by relator is no verdict at all, or if it is to be treated as a verdict, it was not sensible, consistent, or responsive to the issue. ( a) The verdict was not sensible or consistent in that the jury say “we find for the defendants, they,” etc., the fact being that there were two plaintiffs and one defendant, so that it was impossible to say whether the jury intended to find for the plaintiffs, “they” to pay the costs, or the defendant, “he” to pay the costs. The jury may have mistaken the designation of the parties to the suit before the court. ( b) It was not responsive to the issues in that the jury failed to find the value of the property in controversy, which they ought to have done if they intended to find for the defendant; and it was not responsive to the issues in that it was conditional as to the payment of costs. (1 Wagn. Stat. 343, § 6; State v. Ostrander, 30 Mo. 13.) The supposed verdict was clearly within the exceptions stated in the opinion of this court in State ex rel. Nicholson v. Rombauer, 44 Mo. 594.
II. Even if this court should see fit to grant the peremptory writ, it should not require the respondent to enter up the verdict as of the 22d of December, A. D. 1869, because the plaintiffs will be injured in their right to file a motion for a new trial, the December term of the Circuit Court--the term at which the trial was had--having passed.
This is a petition asking that a writ of mandamus may be issued against the respondent, who is one of the judges of the St. Louis Circuit Court, to compel him to receive a verdict rendered by a jury. It seems that there was a case pending in said court wherein Smith and others were plaintiffs, and Webster, the relator, was defendant, in which the jury returned the following verdict: “We, the jury, find a verdict for defendants, they to pay the costs of this suit.” This verdict the...
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