Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/76

 64 KEDBBili BBPOBTEB. �and sufficient for his purpose. Even in Pewrson y. Duane, 4 Wall. 605, Bo muoh relied on, where the oaptain put ofif his passenger froma humane motive, to save his life, and the jury gave $4,000, which the supreme court, beoause of the mitigation, reduced to $50, the damages were punitive and not compensatory, as it was not shown that plaintiff had been damaged in fact one cent. He had paid for no ticket, and had no money of his own, and clearly the $50 was allowed to enforce the judgmerit that the exclusion was tech- nically wrongful, and not to compensate the plaintiff. �In Bailroad v. Brown, lY Wall. 446, a colored woman ex- oluded from a car on aocount of her color "with force, and, as she alleged, with some insuit," recovered $1,500 damages, and it was not even asaigned for error that the damages should have been only compensatory, and the court affirmed the judgment. The true rule will be found to be, I think, that in all cases where the offence is against the particular individual, the want of malice only mitigates the punishment in damages, and may reduce them to zero, acoording to cir- oumstances. But, where the offence is not only against a particular individual, but also against the public, as in most, if not all the cases of wrongful exclusion of passengers, the question is one solely for the jury to say how much punish- ment is necessary to enforce the rights of the public against the carrier, as well as to vindicate the private individual. The defendant here had all the benefit of the principle relied on when the jury were told that the facts, if true, should be taken in mitigation of such punitive damages as they should think proper to give. �The other instruction refused was clearly asking the court to charge upon the weight of the testimony of Stone and Hall. The court charged the jury fully as to the method of weigh- ing testimony, and cautioned them against supposing it con- sisted in merely counting the witnesses. It also instructed them that the burden of showing violence was on the plain- tiff, and that it was her duty to confine her resistance within the point of contributing to her injuries by engaging in an unnecessary trial of strength with superior force. The cases ��� �