MERCHANTS' & PLANTERS' OIL CO. v. KENTUCKY REFINING CO., 69 F. 218

BRUCE, District Judge, after stating tbe facts, delivered the opinion of the court Special charge No. 1 asked by defendant, and refused by the court, should have been given. Whether the demurrer and exception taken to the claim made should have been sustained or not, it would seem clear that after the introduction of the evidence no case was made for exemplary damages, and this claim and the evidence in support of it should have been withdrawn by the trial judge from consideration by the jury.

It is said in reply to this that, the verdict of the jury being in terms for actual damages, it operated no prejudice to the defendant, but who can say that which was admitted to go to the jury on this subject did not tend to swell the verdict? The charge was at least misleading, and the theory of fraud and deceit, which seemed to be the basis upon which both actual and exemplary damages were claimed, was not sustained by the evidence.

The action of the court on the motion for a new trial and the remittitur filed by plaintiff of $760 must have resulted from a consideration of the evidence in support of the claim of actual damages, and by leaving out of view the evidence introduced and allowed to go to the jury on the question of exemplary damages, there does not seem to be evidence in the record to support the verdict for $4,260 actual damages, as the jury found it, or $3,500, the amount to which it was reduced, because the claim for the rental for the time the cars were detained by the defendant was substantially all that was left of the plaintiff’s claim.

To this there was the plea in reconvention that the oil contracted for was not strictly prime summer yellow, but only prime summer yellow cotton-seed oil, and that the sample furnished was not up to the quality of oil contracted for, by which the defendant became liable for damages in breach of its contract. No complaint, however, is made of the charge of the court in this branch of the case. The judgment should be reversed, with costs, and it is so ordered.