Schoenholtz v. Third Avenue Railroad

The evidence shows that the plaintiff hired the wagon damaged. He therefore had a special property in the same. That being so, and it having been damaged by the carelessness of the defendant, the plaintiff had the right to recover; to have the damage repaired, and charge the expense thereof to the defendant. So the trial justice was right in allowing plaintiff to prove what he had to pay to have such damage repaired. That is the only exception taken to the admission or exclusion of testh many. The only exception to the judge’s charge is based upon that part of the charge which directs the jury to find for plaintiff for such repairs, the amount being $23.50, in case they rendered a verdict in his favor. All the rest of the exceptions are taken to certain requests which plaintiff requested the court to charge in his favor, and also because of the refusal of the court to charge certain requests of the defendant. The judge’s charge, in our opinion, submitted to the jury fully and fairly the law of the case. It appears to us that it was very mudh in defendant’s favor because of the fact, apparently, that plaintiff’s counsel deemed it his duty to submit twenty-eight requests to -charge. Many' of them were substantially embraced in the judge’s charge. The defendant submitted seventeen such requests. Many of them also were included in the judge’s charge. A careful reading of these forty-five requests-convinces us that the main object counsel had in view in their submission was to entrap the trial justice, and to obtain something which they were unable to secure during the submission of the evidence or against the judge’s charge, viz. a good exception. Such a practice should not be encouraged. As before stated, the judge’s charge contained all the law that it was necessary for the jury to know, so far as this case was concerned ; and counsel were certainly satisfied with it, because no substantial objection was taken to it; and counsel, in all fairness, should have rested there. Every request that was charged in plaintiff’s favor and at his suggestion was excepted to by the defendant’s counsel, and every request that the justice refused to charge as requested by the defendant was excepted to, as well as any modification of such requests; but none of the exceptions so taken, in our judgment, should entitle defendant to a new trial.

The judgment must be affirmed, with costs.