The Boeing Company v. Daniel C. Shipman

PREFACE

Decision of this appeal should turn on the Seventh Amendment: “In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.” The question of sufficiency of the evidence to require submission of a case to the jury presents a constitutional problem. Galloway v. United States, 1943, 319 U.S. 372, 63 S.Ct. 1077, 87 L.Ed. 1458.

Ordinarily a court seeks ways to avoid deciding a…