Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/420

 406 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

particularly the working classes, are interested in obtaining the same result by diminishing the number of accidents from which alone such lawsuits can originate. Any perceptible diminution in the number of accidents can scarcely be expected when the responsibility of the master for his own negligence to his work- men is nominal and not actual. The prospect of verdicts for large damages actually sustained on appeal 1 in actions brought against him by his injured employes would be a most healthful stimulus to vigilance by the master in performing his legal duties to his men and in giving reasonable care to their safety. A reasonable modification of the assumption doctrine would, moreover, make unnecessary the greater part of the regulative statutes applying to particular trades, yearly increasing in bulk and complexity, confusing alike to lawyer and layman in itself a consummation devoutly to be wished.

GEORGE W. ALGER NEW YORK, N. Y.

1 The percentage of reversals on appeal in master-and-servant cases of this kind, when the verdict of the juries in the courts below had been in plaintiff's favor, is per- haps larger than in any other branch of litigation. In New York for example an examination of twenty volumes of the court of appeals reports (126 N. Y. 156 N. Y.) shows written opinions in thirty-seven such cases. Of these (l) in three cases the juries in the lower court had found for defendant, and plaintiff was the appellant ; in (2) four cases the court below had dismissed plantiff's case as insufficient, without requiring defendant to introduce any testimony ; in (3) twenty-eight cases the juries below had found for plaintiff with substantial damages. The court of appeals in class (l) affirmed all of the cases where plaintiff was defeated below. In class (2) it reversed the four cases where plaintiff had been summarily nonsuited and sent the cases back to trial courts to hear defendant's testimony a partial victory at most for plaintiff. In class (3), where plaintiff had actually received a verdict, of the thirty cases twenty-eight were reversed. These statistics are interesting as showing how complete is the lack of harmony between the courts, at least in New York, and the moral sense of the people by whom the courts were created, in regard to these cases. Twice in thirty times do the opinions of the learned judges of New York's highest court coincide with the opinions of juries of citizens as to the requirements of justice.