Harned v. Watson

This is an appeal from a judgment after verdict whereby the jury awarded the plaintiff $2,000 actual damages and $8,000 exemplary damages as the result of the breach of an alleged agreement of the defendant to marry the plaintiff.

Plaintiff, a woman forty-five years of age, first met defendant at a social function in 1935. She had been married but had obtained a decree of divorce many years before and for the past sixteen years had been making her living as a milliner, earning an average of $200 per month in 1935. The defendant, a man seventy years of age, was married at the time of the first…