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Schnitzler v. Oriental Metal Bed Co.

93 N.Y.S. 1119 Court N.Y. App. Term Decision date 1905-05-23 English

Delivered by SCOTT, P, J.

Contents

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p. 1119
SCHNITZLER v. ORIENTAL METAL BED CO.
(Supreme Court, Appellate Term.
May 23, 1905.)

Headnote

New Trial—Newly Discovered Evidence—Cumulative Testimony.
The fact that newly discovered evidence is cumulative is not ground for denying a motion for new trial based on such evidence, where the verdict rests alone on the unsupported and contradictory evidence of the party for whom it was rendered, and such evidence was met at every point by a number of witnesses, mostly disinterested.
Appeal from City Court of New York, Special Term.
Action by Rose Schnitzler against the Oriental Metal Bed Company. From an order denying a new trial, defendant appeals. Reversed.
Argued before SCOTT, P. J., and TRUAX and DOWRING, JJ.
H. B. Davis, for appellant.
Abraham H. Sarasohn, for respondent.

The motion for a new trial upon the ground of newly discovered evidence should have been granted. The plaintiff’s case was extremely weak and suspicious: Very possibly the evidence first learned of by defendant after the trial would, if presented at the trial, have changed the result. It is true that it is in a sense cumulative, or more properly corroborative of witnesses who were produced, but this is not necessarily fatal to the motion. Vollkommer v. Nassau El. R. Co., 23 App. Div. 88 , 48 N. Y. Supp. 372 . The object of the court must always be to reach a just result, and when, as in the present case, the verdict rested alone upon the plaintiff’s unsupported and very contradictory evidence, which was met at every point by a number of witnesses, few of whom seemed to be interested, we think that the general rule as to granting a new trial for the introduction of cumulative evidence may well be disregarded. We are unable to see that the defendants were guilty of any laches in preparing for trial.

Order reversed, with |l0 costs and disbursements, and motion granted. All concur.

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