Civil
Procedure Class Notes
Fairman
and his colleagues disagree about the importance of preclusion at this stage in
our procedural learning. Fairman thinks
it’s less important than, for example,
A quick look back at Houchens
We’ve
done discovery and we got to summary judgment.
We pretty much brought closure to it, but we ought to review.
The
pseudo-widow wants the husband declared dead.
There’s a
The
Celotex standard says that summary judgment should be entered after
discovery against a party who “fails to make a showing sufficient to establish
the existence of an element essential to that party’s case”.
It’s
most typical that the defendant will make this showing based on affidavits. Say, for example, someone filed an affidavit that
says they saw the husband get hit by a bus in
Norton v. Snapper Power Equipment
What’s
up? Norton was in the commercial
lawn-mowing biz and he bought a Snapper mower.
Somehow he gets his fingers snapped off by the mower blades. He sues Snapper for a couple of things: negligence,
warranty, and product liability. He says
that it was defective because it cut off his fingers.
Norton
presented his case using expert testimony which basically said that the mower
could have been safer if it had a “dead man” device. Snapper puts on its case. Then there’s a jury verdict and a judgment. In a typical trial, the jury verdict would be
for or against the plaintiff, and then the judgment would embody some dollar
amount the jury found.
The
procedural motions in this case include a motion for a directed verdict. This procedure is important, yet weird,
because you have to make the motion multiple times to preserve this “error”. At the end of Norton’s evidence, Snapper
moved for a directed verdict. That is to
say that they’ve already lost because they failed to put on some part of their
case.
After
Snapper puts on its case, it moves again for the directed verdict. It’s denied, at least in part, and the case
goes to the jury. The jury finds Snapper
80% responsible. Then Snapper moves for
a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and the court grants it! Why would the court grant this motion yet
deny the other two which are the same thing?
Directed
verdict, judgment notwithstanding the verdict, judgment non obstante veredicto,
and J.N.O.V. are all now called judgment as a matter of law. Check out Rule 50!
Rule 50. Judgment
as a Matter of Law in Jury Trials; Alternative Motion for New Trial;
Conditional Rulings
(a) Judgment as a Matter of Law.
(1) If during a trial by jury a party has been fully
heard on an issue and there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a
reasonable jury to find for that party on that issue, the court may determine
the issue against that party and may grant a motion for judgment as a matter of
law against that party with respect to a claim or defense that cannot under the
controlling law be maintained or defeated without a favorable finding on that
issue.
This
is pretty similar to summary judgment.
If, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the
nonmovant, a reasonable jury could not reach a contrary verdict, then the court
may grant judgment as a matter of law.
This
is a conflict between the judge and the jury.
The judge basically says, “Jury!
You’re crazy! You couldn’t
possibly make that decision! I’m taking
it out of your hands.”
What
testimony was offered in this case? How
do we know what happened in this case?
It’s all based on Norton’s word.
Nobody else was there when it happened.
We listen to Norton, and then the experts who talked about the “dead man”
stuff and how fast such a control would have stopped the blades.
Could
a juror have concluded that the product was defective based only on these two
pieces of information?
The
problem is that you have one story told by the plaintiff, and then the trial
judge introduces the court’s own position on the liability issue. The court says that because Norton can’t
remember how he got injured, you can’t tell if a “dead man” device would have
helped.
However,
the Court of Appeals says that there was enough circumstantial evidence for a
jury to conclude that the device was defective.
The Court of Appeals concludes that this was a misuse of judgment
notwithstanding the verdict.
If
the plaintiff successfully appeals a directed verdict, they get a new trial. However, if the plaintiff successfully appeals
a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, they get the verdict that the jury originally
entered immediately.
The
judge here works the way he does because he hopes that the jury will come back
with a zero verdict so he doesn’t have to grant the motion. It seems repetitive to make this motion over
and over, but it’s essential. It’s a lot
more efficient to grant the judgment as a matter of law instead of a directed
verdict.
One
more thought about this case: how is JNOV like summary judgment? How are they similar? They both view the evidence in the light most
favorable to the nonmovant. The key
similarity is that both take cases out of the hands of the jury. When you look at the standard they use: “no
genuine issue as to any material fact” from Rule 56 versus “no
legally sufficient evidentiary basis” from Rule 50…Fairman
says we can think of these two standards as the same.
What’s
next? It’s preclusion. What is the result of that verdict to future litigation
between the same litigants or those litigants and other litigants?