189 W. Va. 570 - Linville v. Moss’s Empirical Analysis
1993
Citation profile
22 state decisions
Relationships
Relies on 163 W. Va. 332 - Bradley v. Appalachian Power Co. · 173 W. Va. 548 - Kaiser v. Hensley · 160 W. Va. 156 - Freshwater v. Booth · 131 W. Va. 10 - Raines v. Faulkner · 154 W. Va. 748 - Biddle v. Haddix
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the issue of liability has been so conclusively proven that an appellate court may infer that the jury’s confusion was with regard to the measure of damages and not to liability. In this type of case an appellate court can feel justified in remanding the case for a new trial on the issue of damages alone because it would be unfair to put the plaintiff to the expense and aggravation of proving liability once again when he has been denied a proper and just verdict by the caprice and incompetence of a particular jury.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“In a civil action for .recovery of damages for personal injuries in which the jury returns a verdict for the plaintiff which is manifestly inadequate in amount and which, in that respect, is not supported by the evidence, a new trial may be granted to the plaintiff on the issue of damages on the ground of the inadequacy of the amount of the verdict.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“The easiest type of inadequate jury award is where the plaintiff would have been entitled to a directed verdict on liability as a matter of law, and the damages are inadequate even when viewed most strongly in favor of the defendant. In this type of case an appellate court need not agonize about reversing and remanding for a new trial on the issue of damages alone and that is the proper course.... The second type of case is one where liability is strongly contested and the award of damages is clearly inadequate if liability were proven.... In this situation an appellate court cannot infer from the jury verdict alone whether the jury were confused about the proper measure of damages or whether they were confused about the proper rules for determining liability, or both. These cases represent an extreme example of the compromise verdict which in its less oppressive form has historically been rejected in theory by all appellate courts, yet accepted in practice by almost every bar and bench. The third type of case is the defendant's verdict perversely expressed and involves a factual situation in which liability is either tenuous or at least strongly contested by the defendant and the award of damages is so inadequate as to be nominal under the evidence in the case. Usually these cases do not provide a situation in which the defendant would have been entitled to a directed verdict on liability as a matter of law; nonetheless, because the plaintiff’s evidence of liability is so qu”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.