Summary
In Holdys v. Swift Co. 198 Minn. 258, 269 N.W. 468, it was claimed by plaintiff that he was not drunk, but three eyewitnesses testified that he was drunk, and plaintiff admitted that he had pleaded guilty in court to the offense of being drunk on the occasion referred to.
Summary of this case from Benson v. Northland Transportation Co.Opinion
No. 31,001.
November 6, 1936.
Master and servant — action by employe to recover disability benefits — evidence.
Order denying a new trial reversed because the evidence is in manifest preponderance against the verdict.
Action in the municipal court of St. Paul, Ramsey county, to recover disability benefits alleged to be due plaintiff as a member of defendant benefit association for an injury received while an employe of defendant Swift and Company. The case was tried before Clayton Parks, Judge, and a jury. Plaintiff had a verdict. Defendants appealed from an order denying their alternative motion for judgment or a new trial. Reversed and new trial granted.
Grannis Grannis, for appellants.
Lewis E. Lohmann, for respondent.
After a verdict for plaintiff, defendants appeal from the order denying their alternative motion for judgment notwithstanding or a new trial.
As an employe of defendant Swift and Company and a member in good standing of its codefendant, Swift Company Employes Benefit Association, plaintiff sues to recover a disability benefit because of an accident suffered by him February 27, 1935. The amount involved was liquidated by stipulation at $312. The only defense was based upon a rule of the benefit association that "benefits shall not be payable for disability, directly, indirectly, or partly due to intoxication, or to use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage, or to immoderate use of stimulants or narcotics."
To us the conclusion is inescapable, on the evidence, that plaintiff suffered his injury because of his intoxication. Drunkenness is established by the testimony of three disinterested witnesses and by the fact that plaintiff, the "morning after," pleaded guilty to having been drunk. To go further into the evidence would serve no useful purpose. To us the verdict was so manifestly and palpably against the weight of the evidence that we are constrained to reverse the order under review and send the case back for a new trial. However, much as the interests of justice might be served thereby, the case is not one where we are at liberty to order the entry of judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
There was an error in the charge which did not help the defendants. The jury was instructed that plaintiff's plea of guilty of drunkenness was "not a material thing but merely an item of evidence in the whole case." That was not a correct statement. The plea, as an admission, was not only "an item of evidence" but a very material one. It was error to instruct the jury otherwise.
The order under review is reversed.