Hyer v. Lewiston, Augusta & Waterville Street Railway Co.
Hyer v. Lewiston, Augusta & Waterville Street Railway Co.
Opinion of the Court
Two of the defendant’s cars collided, and the plaintiff, a passenger on one, wa¡s injured. For his injuries, the
The physical injury was a sprain of the metatarsal joint of the right foot. The plaintiff wore a plaster cast three or four weeks. Then he returned to his accustomed employment, but continued to use crutches for two weeks after. The plaintiff contended, and the evidence warranted the jury in finding, that the injuries were more serious and continuing than a mere sprain. Being asked at the trial, several months after injury, to explain, the plaintiff said:— “It seems to be drawing this foot over like that all the time, and you let me take it and try to bend it out like that, and it seems as though you was taking a piece of thick heavy cloth and trying to tear it in two. . . . This cord now seems to be pulling up all the time.” I walk “on the outside like that, because I can’t step down square.” He Ja!so said: “Nights after I get into bed it will vary in the hours when it starts in, but it pains míe. Not what you may call a very severe pain, but pain enough to keep a man kind of awake. Sometimes it will pain me nights so I am awake three or four hours, then I will get into a drowse, and it will pain me and wake me up again, and that is the way I get it nights. Some nights I get a good nights’ sleep.....It feels fairly well in the morning, but take it along between two and three o’clock in the afternoon it begins to get weak and I have to kind of favor it from that on every day.” The plaintiff’s employer testified that “he simply limps around, and doesn’t go as readily as he used to.” His attending physician testified that when he examined him ten days before the trial, “while the motion in the joints was all perfect, he walked on the outside of his foot. He couldn’t seem to flex or extend the toes. By any stimulus I was able to apply it seemed to be impossible to make him do it. I touched the bottom of his foot and around his leg with a pointed instrument, and made pressure over certain points on his legs, in trying to make him flex his toes, and did not succeed. Apparently he tried to flex his toes, and couldn’t seem to. Apparently there was a lack of sensation as well as motion.” Another physician tested him for sensation, and testifies that “apparently he had no feeling in the sole of his foot. I úsbd a high frequency electric current upon the bottom of the foot; had a spark about an inch and a half long — very powerful spark, and I let that go on the sole of the
Having stated the essential evidence, we think comment is unnecessary. We discover no tendency on the part of the plaintiff to exaggerate either his objective or his subjective symptoms. The jury were warranted in accepting his statements. And the evidence as a whole leaves no doubt in our minds that the verdict, if excessive at all, is not so excessive as to justify the interference of the court.
Motion overruled.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- John M. Hyer v. Lewiston, Augusta & Waterville Street Railway Company
- Status
- Published