Haas, Dunaway, Shelfer & Haas, George A. Haas, for plaintiffs in error.

2. It is not error for a trial court to overrule a ground of a motion for new trial objecting to the admission of certain evidence where other evidence of like nature or to the same effect was admitted without objection.

3. A witness who knows an injured person well and saw him frequently before and after the injury, may testify as to the witness's factual impression of the injured's general physical appearance before and after the injury.

4. The trial court did not err in refusing to give a request to charge which, while in language stated by the Supreme Court and approved by both appellate courts in previous cases, was not particularly adjusted to facts and issues in the present case.

5. The trial judge did not err in excluding, as irrelevant to the issues in the case, testimony concerning existence of speed limit signs near the site of an accident the night before the trial, which was 4 1/2 years after the accident.

6. A witness may testify to an impression if it be derived from recollection; what he cannot do is testify to a belief founded on hearsay or from his own inference based on other facts.

7. Testimony based on plaintiff's experience as to plaintiff's estimate of the amount of his earnings before his injury; plaintiff's testimony that he had had no earnings since the injury because he was unable to work; evidence of plaintiff's physical ability to work before the injury and his disability thereafter; and medical testimony that a part of his disability was due to his injuries and that it was permanent, authorized the court to charge on loss of earnings up to the time of the trial, loss of earning capacity, and the use of the Carlisle Mortality Table.

Thomas B. Hollingsworth filed suit in Fulton Superior Court against Atlanta Metallic Casket Company and Deumah B. Bishop its employee, for personal injuries received when a tractor of the casket company ran into him. The case was tried before a jury which returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and against both the defendants for the sum of $9,500. Judgment was accordingly entered.

The defendants filed an amended motion for new trial. To the judgment of the trial court in overruling the motion for new trial the defendants excepted.

(This is the second appearance of this case in this court on exceptions to the overruling of a motion for new trial brought by the defendants. See Atlanta Metallic Casket Co. v. Hollingsworth, 104 Ga. App. 154, 121 SE2d 388.)

1. Special ground 1 urges that there are those times when, through a lack of understanding of the issues, or because of gross mistake, or for purely emotional reasons unrelated to the evidence, the jury may award damages in an amount so fantastically excessive and so completely unwarranted that simple justice demands a new trial. It is said that the verdict here is one of those. This verdict, it is suggested, is so grossly excessive as to shock the conscience and to justify the inference of undue bias.

In ruling on this ground we think it would suffice to point out that this case was tried before, and the motion for a new trial was heard by one of our State's most proficient superior court judges, whose judicial conscience, an exemplar, obviously was not shocked by the verdict.

There is, in the brief of evidence, testimony showing pain and suffering brought on by a physical injury occasioned by the negligence of the defendants. The award of damages for this element under the Georgia Code and numerous decisions is exclusively for the jury to determine. "Though the verdict may be 'large and generous,' we do not feel authorized to set it aside on the sole ground that it is excessive, there being nothing in the record to indicate prejudice or bias on the part of the jury, and the verdict having the approval of the trial judge. Seaboard Air-Line R. Co. v. Vaughn, 102 Ga. App. 117, 119 (1) (115 SE2d 877).

The trial judge did not err in overruling special ground 1 of the motion for new trial.

2. Special ground 2 complains of the admission over objection of the following testimony of the plaintiff: "Q. And why, Sir? And why haven't you, Sir? A. Because I haven't been able to work."

We find in the brief of evidence other testimony of the plaintiff which is that, "I have not earned any money since the injury because I haven't been able to work." Further, Dr. F. B. C., in response to a question asked on direct examination, testified that plaintiff ". . . said he couldn't work because he couldn't stand on his feet," and again on redirect examination reiterated that plaintiff ". . . said he couldn't work because he couldn't stand on his feet." No objections were mace to any of this testimony, all of which in effect is the same as that decried as erroneous in the motion for new trial.

It is not error for a trial court to overrule a ground of a motion for new trial where evidence of like nature, or to the same effect as that objected to, has been admitted without objection. Louisville &c. R. Co. v. Lovelace, 104 Ga. App. 642 (1) (122 SE2d 483); Savannah Electric Co. v. Crawford, 211 Ga. 373, 379 (86 SE2d 311); West Lumber Co. v. Schnuck, 85 Ga. App. 385, 388 (69 SE2d 577); Wood v. State, 107 Ga. App. 384 (130 SE2d 355). Clearly, the answer was responsive.

4. Ground 5 charges the court with error in refusing to give in its precise language a request to charge to the effect that damages "traceable in some measure" to defendant's wrongful act but "resulting chiefly from other and contingent circumstances" are too remote to be the basis of recovery. The request follows almost exactly the language in Central of Ga. R. Co. v. Dorsey, 211 Ga. 350 (86 SE2d 227). The requested charge excluded does not meet this test.

5. No error requiring a new trial is shown in grounds 6 and 7, which complain that the trial court refused to permit a witness for the defendant, Newberry, to testify that he had observed the night before that there were no signs in the vicinity of the accident indicating a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, but there was one sign indicating a speed limit of 35 miles per hour. The trial judge correctly ruled that the presence or absence of speed limit signs at the time of the trial had no bearing on the issue of the speed limit or signs at the time of the accident which occurred approximately 4 1/2 years earlier. Hence, the offered testimony was not admissible for the purpose of impeaching the plaintiff's witness who had testified that there were 30-mile speed limit signs near the site at the time of the accident.

The defendant contends also that Newberry's testimony should have been admitted for the purpose of being connected with the defendant Bishop's testimony. Bishop testified that he had been on the road the Friday night preceding the trial and as far as he could tell the signs were the same as they were in 1957. The theory urged is that this coupling of testimony would prove that there was no 30-mile speed limit sign at the time of the accident. This conclusion does not necessarily follow from Bishop's and Newberry's testimony, as Bishop said nothing about any speed signs being present in 1957; his testimony was merely that the site of the accident was in the city limits and the speed law was 35 miles per hour. Moreover, Bishop testified that he was driving between 25 and 30 miles per hour. The plaintiff contended that he was driving far in excess of 35 miles per hour. Therefore, the defendant was not harmed by the rejection of Newberry's testimony even if it could have disproved a 30-mile speed limit.

6. Special ground 8 assigns error on the court's charge on recovery for reasonable medical expenses. In his petition the plaintiff sought only "$75 in doctor bills and for medication." The defendant contends that the only evidence on plaintiff's medical expenses--plaintiff's testimony as to what Dr. Clark had charged him that, "I don't know exact, but probably $60"--had no probative value and was insufficient to authorize the charge.

While an unqualified answer that the witness "does not know" amounts to no evidence, State Hwy. Dept. v. Worley & Co., 103 Ga. App. 25 (5) (118 SE2d 298), this is not true where the witness, although attempting to qualify his statement or show a doubtful state of mind, nevertheless gives positive testimony, such as that he "does not know exactly but thinks" a certain thing. Grant v. Dannals, 87 Ga. App. 389 (1) (74 SE2d 119); Thornton v. King, 81 Ga. App. 122 (58 SE2d 227); Ellison v. Evans, 85 Ga. App. 292 (69 SE2d 94); Hill v. Kirk, 104 Ga. App. 442 (122 SE2d 149). In this case there is such evidence: the plaintiff's testimony set out above and his testimony that he had not earned any money since the injury because he had not been able to work; evidence as to the work he was physically able to do before the injury and his physical disability thereafter; medical testimony to the effect that at least a part of his disability was due to the injuries he received from being hit by the defendant's truck and that his disability would last him "for the rest of his days."

While the medical testimony is conflicting, the respective doctors expressed high opinions of each other. The contradictory evidence merely presented issues for the jury to resolve.

The present decision is consistent with the decision in Hunt v. Williams, 104 Ga. App. 442, supra. In that case we recognized that proof of actual earnings either before or after the injury is not essential, but held that in the absence of any evidence from which the jury could arrive at a pecuniary value for the plaintiff's earning capacity before her injury, though she may have had none thereafter, a charge on loss of earning capacity was not authorized. In Southern R. Co. v. Daniell, 102 Ga. App. 414 (116 SE2d 529), the reason the evidence did not authorize a charge on loss of earning capacity was that it showed the amount of plaintiff's earnings from both property rentals and carpentering work, and it was impossible to separate from the total earnings the amount of his earnings from his work.

As there is in the record evidence from which the jury could have deduced that the injuries of the plaintiff were permanent and that this caused a matenal diminution in the future earning capacity of the plaintiff, the trial court correctly instructed the jury on the use of the Carlisle Mortality Tables. Florida Central &c. R. Co. v. Burney, 98 Ga. 1 (26 SE 730); Western &c. R. Co. v. Knight, 142 Ga. 801 (83 SE 943); 50 ALR2d 419, et seq.

Since the evidence authorized the court's charges on loss of earnings up to the time of trial, loss of earning capacity, and the use of the Carlisle Mortality Table, it was not error to overrule grounds 9, 10, and 11.

The trial judge did not err in overruling the amended motion for new trial.

Judgment affirmed. Carlisle, P. J., and Hall, J., concur.