Opinion
No. 40018.
November 21, 1929. Rehearing Denied March 21, 1930.
NEW TRIAL: Grounds — Inadequate Verdict — Discretion of Court. The granting of a new trial because of the inadequacy of the verdict will not ordinarily be interfered with by the appellate court.
Headnote 1: 47 L.R.A. 40; 20 R.C.L. 284.
New Trial: 46 C.J., § 152, p. 208, n. 8; § 465, p. 406, n. 16.
Appeal from Cerro Gordo District Court. — C.H. KELLEY, Judge.
Action to recover damages for the conversion of a certain tractor upon which plaintiff claims to have a chattel mortgage lien. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff in the sum of $1.00. Plaintiff filed a motion for a new trial, which was sustained, and the defendant appeals. — Affirmed.
Strock, Cunningham, Sloan Herrick, for appellants.
Senneff, Bliss, Witwer Senneff, for appellee.
The motion for a new trial was sustained generally. We need to consider only one ground of said motion. The jury found in favor of the appellee, and assessed the amount of damages at $1.00. Under the evidence, it was obvious that a verdict in said sum was very inadequate, and this was made a ground of the motion for a new trial. If appellee was entitled to recover at all, as found by the jury, the amount of recovery should necessarily have been much greater than that fixed by the jury. It is a thoroughly established rule of this court that the question of granting a new trial rests largely in the discretion of the trial court. Under the record in this case, there was no abuse of such discretion shown. See Utseth v. Pratt-Mallory Co., 208 Iowa 1324, and cases cited therein.
Other questions are argued, but we do not deem it essential to pass upon them at this time. A new trial has been granted, and we cannot anticipate that there may be no change in the record upon such retrial. We therefore limit our holding to the one question that the granting of a new trial on the ground of the inadequacy of the verdict was not an abuse of discretion on the part of the trial court, and said order is — Affirmed.
ALBERT, C.J., and EVANS, De GRAFF, and KINDIG, JJ., concur.