Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman, 295 U.S. 654 (1935)

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Baltimore & Carolina Line, Inc. v. Redman

No. 178

Argued December 6, 1934
Decided June 3, 1935.
295 U.S. 654

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

1. The right to trial by jury preserved by the Seventh Amendment is the right which existed under the English common law when the Amendment was adopted. P. 657.

2. The Amendment not only preserves that right, but exhibits a studied purpose to protect it from indirect impairment through possible enlargements of the power of reexamination existing under the common law, and, to that end, declares that "no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law." P. 657.

3. The aim of the Amendment is to preserve the substance of the common law right of trial by jury, as distinguished from mere matters of form or procedure, and particularly to retain the common law distinction between the province of the court and that of the jury, whereby, in the absence of express or implied consent to the contrary, issues of law are to be resolved by the court, and issues of fact are to be determined by the jury under appropriate instructions by the court. P. 657.

4. The practice of reserving questions of law arising in trials by jury and of taking verdicts subject to the ultimate ruling on the questions reserved -- the reservation carrying with it authority to make such ultimate disposition of the case as might be made essential by the ruling under the reservation, such as entering a verdict or judgment for one party where the jury has given a verdict for the other -- was well established when the Seventh Amendment was adopted, and therefore must be regarded as a part of the common law rules to which resort must be had in testing and measuring the right of trial by jury preserved and protected by that Amendment. P. 659.

5. In an action in a federal court in New York to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained by the plaintiff through the defendant’s negligence, the defendant, at the close of the evidence, moved for dismissal of the complaint and also for a directed verdict in its favor, basing both motions upon the ground that the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict for plaintiff. The court, as permitted by a New York statute and the common law practice above mentioned, with the tacit consent of both parties, reserved the questions of law presented by the motions and submitted the case to the jury subject to the court’s opinion upon them, and, after receiving a verdict for the plaintiff, it held the evidence sufficient, overruled the motions, and entered judgment on the verdict. Held that, in reversing because, as a matter of law, the evidence was insufficient to sustain the verdict, the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals should embody a direction for a judgment of dismissal on the merits, and not for a new trial, and that such judgment of dismissal would be the equivalent of a judgment for the defendant on a verdict directed in its favor. P. 661.

6. Slocum v. New York Life Insurance Co., 228 U.S. 364, distinguished and in part qualified. Pp. 657, 661.

70 F.2d 635, modified and affirmed.

Certiorari, 293 U.S. 577, to review the reversal of a judgment recovered by the plaintiff in an action for personal injuries.