Opinion
Decided June, 1891.
The refusal of the court to stop a trial by jury upon discovery that one of the jurors is a party to a cause triable by jury pending at the same term, in which counsel engaged on the trial are counsel for him, is not subject to exception. Whether evidence should be excluded for remoteness is a question of fact, determinable at the trial term.
CASE, on the statute of highways for injuries to the plaintiff's intestate. Verdict for the plaintiff.
After the cause had been on trial for a day and a half, the defendants discovered that one of the jurors was a party to an action triable by jury, and pending in the trial term in this county, wherein the counsel for the plaintiff in this suit were his counsel. They thereupon moved that the juror be excused from the panel, on the ground that by Gen. Laws, c. 213, ss. 22, 23, he was disqualified, and that the trial be stopped. The court denied the motion, and the defendants excepted.
The condition of the weather at Warner on a certain day was material. Subject to the defendant's exception, the plaintiff was permitted to show what the weather was on that day in Concord.
A. P. Davis, S. Davis, and Bingham Mitchell, for the defendants.
Albin Martin, for the plaintiff.
The exceptions present no question of law. Whether justice required that the trial should be stopped, and whether, by reason of the proximity of the places, proof of the state of the weather in one town had a tendency to show what it was in the other, were questions of fact to be determined at the trial term. Temple v. Sumner, Smith (N.H.) 226; State v. Howard, 17 N.H. 171, 186; Wentworth v. Jefferson, 60 N.H. 158; Norton v. Wilbur, 5 Gray 7; State v. Boston Maine Railroad, 58 N.H. 410, 412; Amoskeag Mfg. Co. v. Head, 59 N.H. 332, 338; Tilton v. Society, 60 N.H. 377, 384; Cook v. New Durham, 64 N.H. 419; Smith v. Earle, 118 Mass. 531.
Exceptions overruled.
BLODGETT, J., did not sit: the others concurred.