Appealability of Judgments Entered Pursuant to Revittiturs in Federal Courts

The practice of allowing a trial judge to condition his refusal of a defendant's motion for a new trial upon the plaintiff's acceptance of a reduction in damages, known as a remittitur, has had a long, if somewhat uneven, history in the federal court system.' In particular, this mechanism for imposing the judge's will upon the determination of damages in a civil trial has been criticized 2 in light of the seventh amendment's seemingly categorical mandate that [i]n 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 to a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.8