Panhorst v. Panhorst

LAKE, Justice.

The jury was instructed, “If you answer the first issue No, and thereby find that the defendant did not abandon the plaintiff, as the Court has instructed you with reference to that issue, then you would not come to consider the second issue * * * . ” (Emphasis added.) That is, in that event, the jury would not consider the issue of whether such abandonment was or was not without adequate cause or provocation on the part of the plaintiff.

The verdict on the first issue was reached in the light of this instruction:

“Abandonment, within the meaning of the law, means that there is a…