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48 Neb. 638

Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad v. French

Nebraska Supreme Court

Decided May 20, 1896

Nebraska Supreme Court · decided 1896-05-20

<p>Carriers: In juey to Passengee: Recoveey: Evidence. It is only-necessary to a right of recovery against a railroad company to show that the person injured was at the time being transported as a passenger over the defendant’s line of railroad, and that the injury resulted from the management or operation of such railroad. A presumption thereupon arises that such management or operation was negligent, and can he met, only, by showing that the injury arose from the criminal negligence of the party injured, or that the injury complained of was the result of the violation of some express rule or regulation of such company actually brought to the notice of the person injured.</p> <p>2. -: ■ — -—•: -. By the statutes of this state a common carrier is made an insurer of the safety of its passengers, except as against the criminal negligence of such passenger or his violation of some rule of the carrier actually brought to such passenger’s notice. (Compiled Statutes, eh. 72, art. 1, sec. 3.)</p> <p>3. Review: Number of Witnesses. The credibility of witnesses is for the jury, and this court cannot say that the finding of a jury is not supported by sufficient evidence because a greater number of witnesses testified against the finding than testified in its favor.</p> <p>4. Carriers: Recovery for Injuries: Evidence. In a suit by a passenger against a common carrier for damages for an injury alleged to have been sustained while such passenger, when the passenger has shown that the defendant is a common carrier, that he was the carrier’s passenger, and while such was injured, and the extent of such injury, he has made out his case. The carrier then, to escape liability, must show that the injury of the passenger was the result of his criminal negligence, or the result of a violation by him of some express rule or regulation of the carrier actually brought to the passenger’s notice.</p> <p>5. Damages: Negligence. The law awards damages to a party injured through the negligence of another, not as a punishment of the negligent party, but as compensation for the pecuniary loss sustained and the pain and suffering endured by the injured party.</p> <p>6. -: Carriers: Injury to Passenger: Contracts. The relation existing between a common carrier and a passenger is a contractual one, the undertaking of the carrier being to safely transport and deliver the passenger at his destination, and the violation of this contract by the carrier entitles the passenger to recover such damages as will fully compensate him for the injury and loss sustained; but the passenger is not entitled to damages that will put him in a better position than he would have been in had the carrier complied with its contract.</p> <p>7. -: -•: -: Remittitur. The damages awarded a passenger in this case held to be excessive and a remittitur of $1,300 ordered.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1896-05-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently February 1912

1 federal appellate · 1 district · 7 state decisions

50189619001910decided

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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Irvine, C.,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I cannot concur in the conclusion of the court permitting an affirmance of this judgment on plaintiff’s remitting $1,300. Where damages are wholly. unliquidated, and necessarily determined on general considerations without definite rules of admeasurement, the jury is the body which should fix them, and verdicts should not be disturbed unless so clearly disproportionate to the injury sustained as to strike the mind as being manifestly excessive. My"associates think this judgment to be of this character, and in this I agree with them; but I cannot see by what process they ascertain that $5,000 is reasonable, while $6,300 is so grossly excessive as to call for judicial interference. The difference between the twa sums is too small to afford grounds for distinction where, as in this case, every basis of mathematical calculation is absent, and the elements for consideration are of so speculative a nature as mental and physical suffering and bodily inconvenience. I think, measured by verdicts which have been sustained in similar cases, a much larger remittitur should be required, but on a matter so much involved in speculation I would yield my individual opinion to the combined views of the jury, which found a verdict for $10,000, of the trial judge, who reduced it to $6,300, and of my associates, who think $5,000 a proper sum; but, conceding that their views are more nearly right, the difference between the judgment rendered and the estimate of my associates is, in my opinion, too slight to justify any interference with the judgment. Either the judgment is clearly excessive and a substantial remit-titur should be required, or it should be affirmed as it stands.

Norval, J., concurs in the foregoing dissenting opinion.
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