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137 Me. 119

Howe v. Houde

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided October 15, 1940

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1940-10-15

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1940-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently December 1981

10 state decisions

5019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Sturgis, J.

¶1In this action brought by Annette H. Howe of Hartford, Connecticut, to recover damages for personal injuries received on July 6, 1939, while riding along the highway in St. Frederick, P. Q., as a guest passenger in an automobile driven by Theresa Houde of Rumford, Maine, at the close of the plaintiff’s case, the defendant, without offering any evidence, rested and moved for a directed verdict. The motion was granted and an exception allowed.

¶2It is well settled that a verdict should not be ordered for the defendant by the Trial Court when, taking the most favorable view of the plaintiff’s evidence, including every justifiable inference, different conclusions may be fairly drawn from the evidence by different minds. Collins v. Wellman, 129 Me., 263, 151 A., 422; Young v. Chandler, 102 Me., 251, 66 A., 539.

¶3*120A careful study of the record convinces this court that it was for the jury to say whether in this case the defendant had been negligent and the plaintiff had exercised due care. The defendant was not entitled' to a directed verdict.

¶4Only one side of the case having as yet been heard, it seems best not to recite or discuss the facts. The entry is

¶5Exception sustained.

(Barnes, C. J., having retired, did not join in this opinion.)
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