Cardenas

The basic issues to be settled on this appeal, considered separately, are few and simple enough • the final questions to be settled are whether the trial court should be upheld for granting a new trial in favor of the plaintiffs as against the defendants Sam Diaz, Kenneth Ellston and Pete Arizmendis, and whether a judgment notwithstanding the verdict in favor of the plaintiffs and against the same defendants should be affirmed. The apparent complexity of the litigation in part derives from the fact that the present case is a “pilot suit,” the results of which as to the issue of liability are by stipulation to apply to some 24 other pending actions brought by persons in the same legal situation as plaintiff Cardenas, and by reason of the further fact that the normal handling of this simple tort action was by stipulation of the parties so conducted that the trial judge was permitted to order judgment based on what incorrectly appeared to him to be the logical result of a special verdict consisting of answers to five questions; although a jury trial was originally demanded by at least one of the litigants, ultimate reliance was not placed upon a jury’s viewpoint as contained in a…