Nakamura

This appeal is from an order of the trial court granting a motion for a new trial in a ease where a jury had awarded plaintiff damages in the sum of $2,500 for injuries received in an automobile accident. Appellant, conceding that the trial court is vested with broad discretion in ruling upon such a motion (2 Cal. Jur. 27), argues that in this ease there was such an abuse of discretion as to warrant reversal. While the motion was based on various grounds, the decision to grant a new trial rested solely upon error in law occurring at the trial.

The plaintiff, a Japanese woman, thirty-four years of age, testified that while boarding the rear end of a street-car on North Main Street in the city of Los Angeles she was struck by an automobile, driven through the safety zone where she stood, by defendant Raines, a driver employed by defendant corporation, sustaining injuries which incapacitated her for a long period of months and necessitated protracted treatment by a surgeon. It appeared that at the time of the accident plaintiff was employed as a barber earning considerably more than $100 per month, and that after she returned to work, approximately a year later, her earnings were…