Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

5 N.J. Misc. 764

Thomas v. Barlow

Supreme Court of New Jersey

Decided July 23, 1927

Supreme Court of New Jersey · decided 1927-07-23

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1927-07-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently January 2006

12 state decisions

40192719301940195019601970198019902000decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Per Curiam.

¶1The plaintiff sued to recover compensation for injuries which he claims to have received while engaged in a game of basketball at Greenpoint, Long Island, in December, 1925. He was a member of the Perth Amboy team. The defendant was a member of the contesting team. The plaintiff’s claim was that during the game the defendant, without any reason, so far as the playing of the game was concerned, deliberately struck him with his fist in the jaw, thereby fracturing the jawbone, and seriously injuring him. The defendant denied that he had done anything of the kind, and insisted that, if he was the cause of the plaintiff’s injury, his act was entirely unintentional, and that he had no knowledge that he .had struck the plaintiff. The trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, the jury awarding him $3,000. Thereupon, a rule to show cause was allowed, to the defendant.

¶2Our examination of the testimony sent up with the rule satisfies us that this verdict was contrary to the great preponderance of the evidence, which clearly indicates that, if the'injury which the plaintiff claimed to have received was *765the result of a blow delivered by the defendant, the blow was entirely accidental and not the result of any preconceived purpose on the part of the defendant.

¶3Eeaching this conclusion, we have found it unnecessary to consider the other grounds advanced by the defendant for making the rule absolute.

¶4The verdict under review will be set aside and a new trial ordered.

/5/njmisc/764 · .json · Public domain