§ 9-12-4.Construction of verdicts

Jurors are not trained drafters, and their verdicts often come out in plain, imperfect language. This section tells courts how to read that language: give it a reasonable intendment, construe it reasonably, and resist treating imprecise wording as fatal.

The statute sets a high bar for throwing a verdict out. It may not be avoided unless from necessity — meaning a court reaches for every reasonable reading before concluding that no sensible construction can save the verdict. Only when nothing reasonable is left does avoidance become an option.

That preference for construction over avoidance runs through the rest of this article. Where a verdict needs fixing rather than voiding, later sections let a court amend it to conform to the pleadings or strip out an illegal portion — tools that exist because this section starts from the premise that a verdict deserves a fair reading before anything more drastic happens to it.