Opinion
No. 3336.
Decided June 24, 1942.
The general rule of damages in actions for negligence is that interest runs from the date of the verdict. Where such action proceeds to verdict and judgment, without request for an instruction for the allowance of interest, or a reservation of that question by the court, the plaintiff's failure thus to raise the question constitutes a waiver; and after verdict a motion to add interest from the date of the wrongful act cannot be granted.
CASE, for negligence. After judgment in accordance with the former opinion in the same action, ante, 20 the defendant paid the amount of the judgment, plus interest from the date of the verdict. The plaintiff moved that interest be allowed from the date of the loss to the date of verdict. The motion was granted as a matter of law, and the defendant excepted. The plaintiff did not ask at the trial for an instruction to the jury concerning interest, and that question was not reserved. Connor, J., allowed the defendant's bill of exceptions.
Demond, Sulloway, Piper Jones (Mr. Piper orally), for the plaintiff.
Mayland H. Morse and George R. Grant, Jr. (Mr. Grant orally), for the defendant.
"The plaintiff's motion to add interest to the verdict should not have been granted. If he desired an instruction for the allowance of interest, he should have asked for it before the jury retired. By his failure to do so, he waived his right to it and all objections for the want of it, in the same manner he would his right to any other instruction." Parsons v. Jameson, 70 N.H. 625. Nor was the question of interest as an element of damages reserved to the court by agreement before verdict, as was the case in Emery v. Company, 89 N.H. 165. Therefore the usual rule applies, that interest runs from the date of the verdict. P. L., c. 340, s. 1.
Exception sustained.