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21 Cal. 413

Oullahan v. Starbuck

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1863

California Supreme Court · decided 1863-07-01

Action to recover a balance alleged to be due on a sale of personal property. Defense that the transaction was not a sale but only a pledge of the property to secure an indebtedness due defendant from plaintiff. In empaneling the jury a peremptory challenge as to one of the jurors was interposed by plaintiff, and denied by the Court, to which plaintiff excepted, and a bill of exceptions embodying the facts in relation to the challenge was made out and signed by the Court.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1863-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently June 1899

9 state decisions

401863187018801890decided

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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Field, C. J. delivered the opinion of the Court

¶1Cope, J. and Norton, J. concurring.

¶2It is stated by the appellant’s counsel that the only ground upon which the Court below based its action in granting the new trial, was a supposed error in its refusing to allow a peremptory challenge to a juror after he had been accepted, though not sworn. We do not doubt that such was the fact, but the record does not show this, and by its contents we must be governed. The record shows that the motion was also made on the further ground that the evidence was insufficient to justify the verdict, and does not indicate upon which of the two grounds the Court based its ruling. There was conflicting evidence on the trial, though the evidence which is stated in the record appears to fully support the verdict. It is not enough, however, to authorize any interference with the action of the Court below—either in granting or refusing a new trial: for *415alleged insufficiency of the evidence—that an Appellate Court, judging from the evidence as it is reduced to writing, would have come to a different conclusion. The Court before which the witnesses are examined is generally better qualified to determine the propriety of granting or refusing a new trial on this ground than any Appellate Court; and its action in this respect will not be disturbed except for the most cogent reasons.

¶3It is unnecessary, therefore, to pass upon the question whether a right to challenge peremptorily a juror in a civil case under the statute exists until the jury are sworn.

¶4Order affirmed.

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