[Argument of Counsel from page 655 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Justice VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court. P This was an action in a federal court in New York to recover damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained by the plaintiff through the defendant's negligence. The issues were tried before the court and a jury. At the conclusion of the evidence, the defendant moved for a dismissal of the complaint because the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict for the plaintiff, and also moved for a directed verdict in its favor on the same ground. The court reserved its decision on both motions, submitted the case to the jury subject to its opinion on the questions reserved, and received from the jury a verdict for the plaintiff. No objection was made to the reservation or this mode of proceeding. Thereafter the court held the evidence sufficient and the motions ill grounded, and accordingly entered a judgment for the plaintiff on the verdict.
The defendant appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals, which held the evidence insufficient and reversed the judgment with a direction for a new trial. The defendant urged that the direction be for a dismissal of the complaint. But the Court of Appeals ruled that under our decision in Slocum v. New York Life Insurance Company the direction must be for a new trial. We granted a petition by the defendant for certiorari because of the last ruling, and at the same time denied a petition by the plaintiff challenging the ruling on the insufficiency of the evidence.
The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution prescribes:
'In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.'
The right of trial by jury thus preserved is the right which existed under the English common law when the amendment was adopted. The amendment not only preserves that right but discloses a studied purpose to protect it from indirect impairment through possible enlargements of the power of reexamination existing under the common law, and to that end declares that 'no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.'
The aim of the amendment, as this Court has held, is to preserve the substance of the common-law right of trial by jury, as distinguished from mere matters of form or procedure, and particularly to retain the common-law distinction between the province of the court and that of the jury, whereby, in the absence of express or implied consent to the contrary, issues of law are to be resolved by the court and issues of fact are to be determined by the jury under appropriate instructions by the court.
In Slocum v. New York Life Insurance Company, a jury trial in a federal court resulted in a general verdict for the plaintiff over the defendant's request that a verdict for it be directed. Judgment was entered on the verdict for the plaintiff, and the defendant obtained a review in the Court of Appeals. That court examined the evidence, concluded that it was insufficient to support the verdict, and on that basis reversed the judgment given to the plaintiff on the verdict, and directed that judgment be entered for the defendant. A writ of certiorari then brought the case here. The question presented to us was whether, in the situation disclosed, the direction for a judgment for the defendant was an infraction of the Seventh Amendment. We held it was, and that the direction should be for a new trial.