McGrory v. Pacific Electric Ry. Co.

JAMES, J.

Agnes McGrory, a widow, for herself and as guardian of Agnes McGrory, her infant daughter, the two

[672]

being the sole heirs at law of William McGrory, sued to recover damages alleged to have been sustained through the death of the husband and father, which was occasioned by a collision between a car of defendant Pacific Electric Railway Company, upon which deceased was riding, and an express train of the Southern Pacific Company. Defendants conceded their liability, but took issue as to the amount of damages to which plaintiffs were entitled. The jury sitting at the trial returned a verdict for the sum of twenty thousand dollars. This amount defendants contend is excessive and beyond any sum which the evidence established as the total of plaintiffs’ pecuniary loss.

William McGrory at the time of his death was a young man, twenty-five years of age. He had been married less than one year, and was regularly employed as a butcher at á salary of twenty dollars per week. His widow testified that at the time of her husband’s death they were living in a bungalow for which payments were being made out of the wages earned by deceased; that her husband was strong and in good health at the time of the accident and was of a very kind and loving disposition; that he gave her his wages each week, out of which she paid the family expenses and the installments due on the bungalow. The secretary of the business house who employed McGrory testified that McGrory had worked for his company for about two years; that his wages at first had been eighteen dollars per week and afterward twenty dollars per week, which latter sum he was receiving at the time of his death; that as the witness observed him, McGrory was a strong, quiet, steady man of good habits. It was stipulated' at the trial that a man of the age and condition of health of McGrory would have a life expectancy of thirty-eight years. The foregoing is the substance of all of the evidence upon which the jury measured the damages suffered by plaintiffs. If the deceased had lived for .the full period of his expectancy, and had continued to earn twenty dollars per week, at the time of his death he would be sixty-two years old and would have earned approximately thirty-six thousand dollars. The jury, under the rule established by the decisions were permitted to consider the loss of the comfort which the society of deceased would have afforded plaintiffs, in determining the amount of their pecuniary loss. In order to warrant a court in setting aside a verdict for damages on the ground that too great a sum of money