§ 9-12-1.What verdict to cover

A trial builds toward one moment: the jury's verdict. This section tells the jury, and the court reviewing what the jury does, what that verdict has to accomplish. It has to answer the questions the pleadings put before it, and it has to come down on one side — for the plaintiff or for the defendant.

“Issues made by the pleadings” ties the jury's job to the complaint and the answer. Those documents frame the dispute long before a witness ever takes the stand, and the verdict is the jury's answer to the questions they raise — not a broader inquiry into the parties' whole relationship, and not a narrower one that skips over what was pleaded.

The requirement that the verdict go “for the plaintiff or for the defendant” rules out a verdict that leaves the outcome open or unresolved. It sets a baseline for everything else this article covers — how the verdict is worded, how it gets construed after the fact, and when it can be amended — because none of those later rules mean much unless the verdict first does the basic job this section assigns it.