Valentine v. Pollak

• Decision Date: 22 December 1920
• Citation: 95 Conn. 556,111 A. 869
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: VALENTINE v. POLLAK.

111 A. 869

95 Conn. 556

VALENTINE v. POLLAK.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

December 22, 1920

Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; Frank D. Haines Judge.

Action by Florence Valentine against Freda Pollak to recover damages for alienating the affections of, and for criminal conversation with, plaintiff's husband. Verdict and judgment for the plaintiff for $4,208, and defendant appeals. Error, and new trial ordered.

Henry E. Shannon and Frank L. Wilder, both of Bridgeport, for appellant.

William F. Tammany, Paul R. Connery, and John J. Cuneo, all of South Norwalk, for appellee.

WHEELER, C.J.

Errors assigned upon the appeal relate to the refusal of the trial court to set aside the verdict, because excessive and because of the exclusion of the testimony of the foreman of the jury as to the unlawful method of reaching the verdict and to the erroneous instructions given the jury.

Injuries which the jury may have found the plaintiff suffered in consequence of the defendant's acts are the loss of her husband's love and society, the destruction of her home and happiness, the commission of adultery with her husband, and the suffering endured and to be endured in the anguish and distress of mind resulting from the defendant's acts.

Injuries such as these are indeed incapable of precise measurement, but, when proven, they do justify substantial damages. In the light of the circumstances which the jury may have found proven, we cannot say, as matter of law, that the sum awarded was excessive.

Upon the hearing on the motion to set aside the verdict defendant offered evidence tending to prove that shortly after the verdict there was found in the room in which the jury had deliberated 50 or more slips of paper, on one of which was marked $1 and on another $10,000. The defendant claimed that the marks upon these papers, taken in connection with the odd dollars expressed in the verdict, indicated that the verdict had been reached by lot by the several jurors marking upon slips of paper the amount of their verdict and adding the total and dividing by 12. The defendant called as a witness the foreman of the jury for the purpose of inquiring if the jury reached their verdict by the method of lot as claimed. The court excluded the offer, and the defendant complains of this ruling.

From an early period the proceedings of the jury, petit and grand, in their deliberations and in making up their verdict, have been beyond the power of disclosure through the testimony of the jurors. Public opinion is the sanction of this rule.

" Whatever opinions may formerly have been entertained upon the subject," says Waite, J., " the rule seems now to be fully settled, in England, in this state, and generally throughout the Union, that the testimony of a juror cannot be received for the purpose of setting aside a verdict, on the ground of mistake or misconduct, on the part of jurors." Haight et ux. v. Turner, 21 Conn. 593, 595; State v. Freeman, 5 Conn. 348; Meade v. Smith, 16 Conn. 348.

Defendant relies upon State v. Carta, 90 Conn. 79, 96 A. 411, L.R.A. 1916E, 634, as modifying or abrogating this rule. It was not so intended, and a reading of the opinion in that case, holding in mind the real situation as presented to the trial court, will indicate that the opinion does not speak contrary to the intention of the court. The inquiry of the jurors in that case was limited to their knowledge of the existence of a paper found in the jury room. It was received by the court upon a member of the jury volunteering the information, in open court, that the jury knew nothing of the paper, and no objection was made to the consideration of this evidence, and no question of the right of the court to receive and consider it was raised upon the trial or upon the appeal. We treated of the incident as it came to us, as a part of the record unobjected to. Had the question which is presented in this case been presented in State v. Carta, we should have expressed the opinion we here express, for we regard the decisions cited as settling our practice beyond the power of question, and we have never seen reason to doubt the soundness of the reasons which underlie this rule of practice. Most of the instructions complained of accord with our settled law.

The complaint charged two separate sets of acts: First, that the defendant by her acts, blandishments, and seductions alienated the love and affection of the plaintiff's husband; and, second, that the defendant committed adultery with plaintiff's husband. Either charge constituted a legal cause of action, proof of which would support a substantial award of damages.

The trial court was correct in its instruction that the alienation of affections might be established by proof of the acts, blandishments, and seductions of d...