## Facts

- Peter Schiedt sued David G. Dimick in federal court for personal injuries from an automobile accident in Massachusetts, alleging Dimick’s negligence.
- A jury returned a plaintiff’s verdict awarding $500 in damages.
- Schiedt moved for a new trial, asserting the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, a compromise verdict, and inadequate as to damages.
- The district court found the damages inadequate and ordered a new trial unless Dimick consented to increase the judgment to $1,500.
- Dimick consented; Schiedt’s consent was not required and was not given; the court denied the motion for a new trial under its conditional order.
- The First Circuit reversed, holding the conditional increase violated the Seventh Amendment.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether the Seventh Amendment permits a federal trial court to deny a new trial by increasing an inadequate jury damages award (additur) based solely on the defendant’s consent, without the plaintiff’s consent and without submitting damages to a jury.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the First Circuit.
- A federal court lacks power under the Seventh Amendment to increase a jury’s damages award on grounds of inadequacy, even as a condition for denying a new trial (additur).
- The Court distinguished remittitur as permissible under long federal practice, but held that additur is constitutionally impermissible in federal courts.

## Legal Principles

- The Seventh Amendment’s protection of civil jury trial, including the rule against reexamination of jury-found facts, is construed by reference to the common law as understood in 1791.
- In actions sounding in tort, the common-law rule at the time of the Seventh Amendment did not permit a court to increase damages awarded by a jury.
- Remittitur may be allowed because it can be framed as removing an excessive portion from a jury’s award, leaving an amount the jury can be treated as having found within the verdict.
- Additur is a judicial addition of damages not found by the jury, substituting the court’s factfinding for the jury’s determination and violating the Seventh Amendment.
- The Seventh Amendment constitutionalizes the relevant common-law limits on judicial alteration of civil jury verdicts in federal court, and those limits cannot be expanded by analogy to accepted practices.

## Conclusion

The Court held that additur is unconstitutional in federal courts because increasing an inadequate jury verdict injects a damages amount never found by the jury, infringing the Seventh Amendment’s preservation of the jury’s role as factfinder; remittitur remains permissible, but it does not justify judicial increases of damages.


Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U.S. 474 (1935)