Spillman v. City Etc. of San Francisco

In Spillman v. City Etc. of San Francisco (1967) 252 Cal.App.2d 782, the plaintiff sued the City and County of San Francisco and one of its employees (collectively, City) after a City employee hit her with a City-owned car. (Spillman, supra, 252 Cal.App.2d at p. 783.) At trial, plaintiff offered evidence regarding the accident and her injuries, but the City was "successful in impeaching her credibility in a variety of ways" and offered an expert witness who provided evidence disputing the extent of the plaintiff's injuries. (Id. at p. 785.) A jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff on liability and for the City on damages. (Id. at p. 786.) The court then granted plaintiff's JNOV motion and ordered judgment for plaintiff for $10,000. (Ibid.) The City appealed, and a division of this court reversed, explaining "judgment notwithstanding the verdict may be sustained only when it can be said as a matter of law that no other reasonable conclusion is legally deducible from the evidence and that any other holding would be so lacking in evidentiary support that the reviewing court would be compelled to reverse it or the trial court would be required to set it aside as a matter of law. The court is not authorized to determine the weight of the evidence or the credibility of witnesses. Even though a court might be justified in granting a new trial, it would not be justified in directing a verdict or granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the same evidence. " (Spillman, supra, 252 Cal.App.2d at p. 786.) The Spillman court concluded "there was considerable conflict in the evidence as to the amount of damages sustained by plaintiff, and that since her credibility was seriously impeached, the jury was entitled to disregard much of her testimony. Under such circumstances, . . . the court clearly abused its discretion in granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict and . . . usurped the City's right to a trial by jury when it took upon itself to reweigh the evidence and, despite the conflicts therein, to fix plaintiff's damages at $10,000." (Spillman, supra, 252 Cal.App.2d at pp. 786-787.) The court explained that "the fact that the jury would have been justified in rendering a verdict in the amount of $10,000 clearly does not mean that the court was correct in granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict in that amount. A verdict in a substantially lower amount would also have been entirely in accord with the evidence." (Id. at p. 787.)