City of Norfolk v. Johnakin

Citations

• 94 Va. 285
• 26 S.E. 830
• 1897 Va. LEXIS 75

Syllabus

<p>1. Instructions—Failure to except to.—This court will not consider objections to instructions given by the trial court, when it appears that no exception was taken to the action of the trial court in giving the instructions complained of.</p> <p>2. Measure of Damages—Personal injuries—Excessive verdict.—There is no legal measure of damages for the pain and anguish resulting from a personal injury, and, ordinarily, the court will leave the question of amount to the sound discretion of the jury, and will not set aside a verdict as excessive unless the damages are so^reat as to indicate that the jury was actuated by partiality or prejudice, or acted under some gross error or misconception of the subject.</p> <p>3. Negligence— Obstructing streets.—It is negligence in a city to allow its streets to remain obstructed at night, without taking reasonable and proper precautions to light them so as to enable persons travelling thereon to observe the obstruction by the use of ordinary care.</p> <p>4. New Trials—After-discovered evidence—Case at bar.—A motion for a new trial on the ground of after-discovered evidence should not be granted unless it appears that the evidence was discovered after the trial; that it could not, by the exercise of reasonable diligence, have been discovered before the trial; that it was material, and such as ought on another trial to produce an opposite result on the merits; and that it is not merely cumulative, corroborative, or collateral. In the case at bar, the evidence was discovered during the trial, and might have been discovered before the trial by the exercise of reasonable diligence, and the record fails to disclose that any motion was made to postpone the case till the evidence could be obtained.</p>