Hamilton v. Hammond Lumber Co.

California Court of Appeal Apr 27, 1936 No. Civ. 10795Published

Before: Gould

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Holding. The court held that jury instructions must be considered in their entirety, and that the instructions in this case, when read as a whole, fairly stated the law. Furthermore, the court held that the damages award was not excessive as it was not so disproportionate to the injuries as to indicate passion, prejudice, or corruption.

Issues

Whether the trial court's jury instructions were erroneous and prejudicial.
Whether the damages awarded by the jury were excessive.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“Instructions must be read and considered as a whole, and a questionable instruction is not ground for reversal when the respective rights and duties of the parties are clearly ascertainable from the charge as a whole.”

GOULD, J.,

pro

tem.

Defendants appeal from a judgment by which jurors awarded plaintiff damages of $17,000 for personal injuries suffered in a collision between his automobile and a motor truck owned by defendant corporation and operated by defendant Goff. Conceding the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the implied findings of the jury as to negligence, appellants attack the court’s instructions as erroneously stating the law applicable to the case. Such errors may not be deemed harmless in a case such as this, appellants urge, because with the sharp conflict disclosed by the evidence the jury might well have rendered a verdict in their favor except for the instructions which are designated as erroneous and prejudicial.

Fifty-three separate instructions were given by the court. To nineteen of these appellants address their arguments, asserting either that they improperly state the law, that they are not warranted by the facts in the ease, that they inject new facts or that they are contradictory or argumentative. No useful purpose would be served by a detailed review of all the instructions and the numerous arguments by appellants and respondent relative thereto. It may be true that the charge to the jury was lengthy, involved and

[463]

weighty; that the instructions in some particulars lacked the cardinal virtues of clarity, preciseness and simplicity. In complicated fact situations such as that presented in this case instructions are often unavoidably cumbersome, and it is quite possible that jurors may be in. a quandary as to what may actually be the law designated to guide them in their deliberations. But as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Waste in

Douglas

Southern Pacific Co.,

203 Cal. 390 [264 Pac. 237], “jurors are presumed to be persons of common intelligence and capable of comprehending the ordinary use of language ’ ’, and ‘ ‘ we may not presume that they may not have understood the charge as we understand it”.

The chief objection to the instructions is the claim that they placed upon appellants an unjust

Hamilton v. Hammond Lumber Co.

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GOULD, J.,

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