If the motion is granted, the plaintiff may either accept the reduced verdict or submit to a new trial restricted to the matter of damages.
[4] The term remittitur originated in English common law, where it was a procedural device used by the plaintiff to correct errors in the trial record.
However, in the 1822 case of Blunt v. Little (in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts), Justice Joseph Story (who, although an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was acting in this case as a trial judge), decided to allow the use of remittitur by the defendant, not the plaintiff, and to use it to reduce the damages on much broader grounds than obvious legal errors.
[5][6][7] Justice Story justified this as an application of the pre-existing English common law on remittitur, but his decision did not cite any specific English (or prior American) cases in support of such a broader use, and contemporary legal scholarship largely views this broader use of remittitur as a legal innovation on Justice Story's part.
Other common-law jurisdictions have largely followed England's lead in abolishing the use of juries in civil trials, and likewise remittitur in that sense has fallen into disuse in them as well.