The plaintiff testified: “ The distance from the lot to my farm is one mile and a half round the road- — one half mile across. I have no other sugar-lot. I have a small piece of wood-land that will cut about twenty-five cords.” The referees reported that they made personal examination upon the lot, and that the above testimony had no influence upon them in their assessment of damages. The court ordered judgment upon the report, and the defendant excepted.
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Decided 1881-06-05
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently June 1936
6 state decisions
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.
¶1
Opinions of witnesses as to value may be received as evidence thereof when it appears to the court that they are qualified to judge of such value. G. L.,
e.
228, s. 23. Whether a witness is qualified to judge of the value of property in litigation, is a question of fact to be determined at the trial.
Jones
v.
Tucker,
41 N. H. 546;
Taylor
v.
Ins. Co.,
51 N. H. 50. The question is one that can be most conveniently and satisfactorily determined at the trial, upon personal examination of the witness, and generally can be determined in no other way.
Dole
v.
Johnson,
50 N. H. 452, 459. Upon an appeal from the assessment of a tax, the question whether a witness is qualified to testify as to value is determined by the commissioners to whom the appeal is referred. For the same reasons the question is determined by referees in trials before them.
¶2
It is an answer to the defendant’s exceptions, however, that the evidence excepted to was ruled out and disregarded by the ref
*115
erees. When evidence is ruled out in jury trials, the jury are instructed to disregard it. In such cases its admission furnishes no ground for a new trial, unless there is reason to believe that the evidence improperly influenced the verdict.
Deerfield
v.
North
wood, 10 N. H. 269;
Hamblett,
v. Hamblett, 6 N. H. 334;
Eastman
v.
Amoskeag Co.,
44 N. H. 143;
Judge of Probate
v.
Stone,
44 N. H. 593, 607;
Zollar
v.
Janvrin,
47 N. H. 324, 326;
Burnham
v.
Butler,
58 N. H. 568. It was not found as a fact, at the trial term, that injustice was done by the evidence admitted by the referees, and it is not necessary to inquire whether the evidence was competent.
