Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad v. Williams

Citations

• 87 Miss. 344
• 39 So. 489

Syllabus

<p>1. Trials. Instruction. Construction.</p> <p>The court in passing upon a single instruction to the jury should give the words used therein their usual and customary significance.</p> <p>2. Same. Harmless error.</p> <p>The court will not disturb a verdict, although particular words in an instruction are subject to criticism, if it be manifest that the jury were not misled by it.</p> <p>3. Same. Instructions construed together.</p> <p>The instructions given in a case miist be construed together, and if, considered as a whole, the law was fairly given in the instructions, the verdict should not be vacated because one of them, when considered alone, may be subject to criticism.</p> <p>4. Same. Estoppel to allege error.</p> <p>A party who has asked and been given an instruction containing inapt words cannot complain of his adversary’s instructions because they contain the same words.</p> <p>5. Same. Exemplary damages.</p> <p>An instruction, otherwise proper, authorizing the jury to award such sum as they shall “see fit” as exemplary damages, is not erroneous because it leaves the amount of such damage solely to the discretion of the jury.</p> <p>C. Same. Carriers. Injuries to passenger.</p> <p>An instruction, in an action against a carrier for an assault by its conductor on a passenger, which authorizes a verdict for the passenger on finding that he, while pursuing his journey, “was set upon by the conductor and insulted and violently handled, or was wrongfully ejected from the train on which he had a right to be,” is not open to the objection that it does not charge that the action of the conductor must have been wrongful or unprovoked; the words “set upon” necessarily implying an unwarranted attack, and the word “insult” conveying the idea of affronts by profane or obscene words, and the words “violently handled” indicating the result of the physical assault.</p>