Morrison Waite

“ Neither under the statute nor the rule has a party the legal right to demand a judgment for damages in excess of interest. The amount of the damages, as well as the propriety of giving any at all, is left to the judicial discretion of the court. This being the case, we think the rule may fairly be construed as limiting the amount beyond which we cannot go, but as leaving us at liberty to give less than the full sum in cases where, in our judgment, the circumstances are such as to make it proper to do so. ”

“ An inflexible rule, requiring us to award a certain specified amount, or none at all, would oftentimes operate to defeat itself. The object is to discourage frivolous appeals, as well as to compensate to some extent for the loss which results from delay. Oftentimes ten per cent upon the amount of a judgment might far exceed the loss actually sustained; and in such cases we might delcine to award damages at all, if we could not give less, because of the wrong that would be inflicted if we did give them. ”

“ The rules had been changed at the previous term, he said, not because of 'any supposed repugnancy between them and the act of 1842, but because the court deemed it just to place the judgments in this court upon the same footing with the judgments in the Circuit and District Courts; and that suitors in the courts of the United States should stand on the same ground with suitors in the State courts, in its appellate as well as in its inferior tribunals.' p. ”