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180 Mich. 607

Crawl v. Dancer

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided June 1, 1914

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1914-06-01

Assumpsit in justice’s court by Samuel Crawl against Jess D. Dancer for goods sold and delivered. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appealed to circuit court. Judgment for plaintiff. Defendant brings error.

Relies on Benedict v. Michigan Beef & Provision Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1914-06-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently December 1968

5 state decisions

10191419201930194019501960decided

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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Kuhn, J.

¶1Plaintiff recovered a judgment against the defendant in the justice’s court of $47.80. On an appeal to the circuit court, in a trial before a jury, it resulted in a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff in the sum of $48.50.

¶2The case is here by writ of error, and it is claimed *608that the trial court should have granted the motion for a new trial which was made by the defendant, because the verdict was a compromise verdict, as it should have been either for the entire amount of $95.70, the claim of the plaintiff, or, for the defendant, no cause of action. The dispute arises out of the method used in scaling certain logs sold by plaintiff to defendant. Plaintiff claims that the logs were sold with butts on, and the defendant claims that the logs were to be butted to get above certain irons and nails which had been driven into the trees. In order to have a verdict set aside because of its being a compromise, it must be clear that the jury reached the verdict by "splitting differences.” Benedict v. Provision Co., 115 Mich. 527, 531 (73 N. W. 802). We are not satisfied from this record that such an inference is the necessary one, and agree with the trial judge, who, in denying the motion for a new trial, said that the verdict might be supported by the evidence given on the trial.

¶3Defendant also claims that it was error for plaintiff’s attorney, in opening the case to the jury, to refer to the fact that the plaintiff had recovered a judgment in the justice’s court, and the defendant had appealed. The court, in referring to this in his charge, specifically instructed the jury that they must not be governed by what happened in the justice’s court and must decide the case upon the proof offered on the trial before them.

¶4We are of the opinion that no prejudicial error was committed in the trial of the case, and the judgment is affirmed.

McAlvay, C. J., and Brooke, Stone, Ostrander, Bird, Moore, and Steere, JJ., concurred.
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