Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-2_06-cv-01349/USCOURTS-caed-2_06-cv-01349-5/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

----oo0oo----

DON ANTOINE,

NO. CIV. S-06-01349

Plaintiff, WBS GGH

v. ORDER RE: MOTION FOR 

NEW TRIAL

COUNTY OF SACRAMENTO, 

DARIN GRIEM, CHRIS BAKER, 

JOSEPH REEVE, GRIAN WADE, 

and CHRISTOPHER BRITTON 

Defendants.

_____________________________/

----oo0oo----

Following the return of a jury verdict awarding

plaintiff $20,000 in compensatory damages as well as

$25,000 in punitive damages against each of defendants

Baker, Reeve, Wade and Britton and $50,000 against

defendant Griem, all individual defendants move for a new

trial pursuant to Rule 59 of the Federal Rules of Civil

Procedure.

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DISCUSSION

I. Liability Issues

A. Evidentiary Rulings

Plaintiff’s expert witness, Jeffrey Schwartz, was

qualified to express expert opinions under Rule 702 of the

Federal Rules of Evidence, and it would have been error to

preclude him from testifying altogether. It is always a

difficult task to keep expert witnesses on track, given

that most of them consider it part of their job to

effectively advocate the position of the side that hired

them. This witness was no exception. Nevertheless, the

court did the best it could to keep his testimony on point,

ruling on objections when made and even commenting on the

testimony when it was felt necessary.

Although defendants’ attorney argues that the

court should have prevented the witness from opining about

“nationally accepted correctional practices,” it was the

witness’s opinion that such practices existed, he was

qualified to express that opinion, and it was not for the

court to substitute Mr. Chalfant’s, or its own, non-expert

opinions on the subject.

The court permitted the witness to express his

opinions regarding the propriety of the “grating” practice

only in the context of whether the defendants’ decision to

employ that practice rather than the “prostraint” chair was

appropriate, because there was evidence that the decision

of which of those two alternative forms of restraint to use

was committed to the discretion of the individual officers. 

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The court does not believe it was error to permit the

witness to express those opinions.

Although the court made it abundantly clear to the

jury that a finding of liability could not be based on what

the defendants may have done in other cases, it did allow

one of the defendants to be questioned about what he may

have seen or done on other occasions for the limited

purpose of “shed[ing] some light on what he did in this

case here.” (Trial Tr. Apr. 4, 2008 12:6-9.) The court

still believes that was a correct ruling.

In sum, the court is satisfied that it did not

commit error in its evidentiary rulings sufficient to

justify a new trial on the issues of liability.

B. Jury Instructions

Defendants first complain that the court did not

give their Fourteenth Amendment instruction. The court

found defendants’ proposed instruction objectionable in

several respects. For example, it began with the

unqualified statement that, “Pretrial detainees may not be

punished prior to an adjudication of guilt under due

process of law.” The court felt this statement was

overbroad without providing the jury with some definition

of what it meant by “punishment.” To the lay person,

punishment might be interpreted as any form of sanction. 

Yet, it could not be disputed that jailers have authority

to promulgate reasonable rules of conduct for pretrial

detainees and that reasonable sanctions may be imposed for

violations of those rules. Although defendants’ proposed

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instruction went on to talk about what might not amount to

punishment, it nowhere attempted to define what was meant

by that term.

Therefore, the court chose not to give defendants’

instruction in the form presented. Instead, the court went

to substantial effort to craft an alternative instruction

focusing more on the distinction between what types of

action jailers are permitted to take and what types of

action they are not permitted to take with regard to

pretrial detainees. The court’s instruction eliminated

some of the objectionable language but still included much

of the language defendants had proposed. After defense

counsel objected to the court’s proposed instruction on

other grounds, the court decided to give plaintiff’s

instruction, which it found preferable to defendants’.

Plaintiff’s instruction, which the court gave, was

adequate. “If the instruction as given sufficiently covers

the case so that a jury can intelligently determine the

questions presented, the judgment will not be disturbed

because further amplification is refused. The Court need

not use the precise words of an offered instruction, and an

instruction is sufficient if it correctly states the

principle of law.” Investment Serv. Co. v. Allied Equities

Corp., 519 F.2d 508, 511 (9th Cir. 1975).

Moreover, even if the instructions on plaintiff’s

Fourteenth Amendment claim were inadequate, the error would

have been harmless, because the jury found all defendants

liable on plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment claim as well as his

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Fourteenth Amendment claim. The only complaint defendants

now express with respect to the instructions on the Fourth

Amendment claim is that the court failed to give

defendant’s so-called “personal participation” instruction.

Defendants’ “personal participation” instruction

would have read as follows:

Liability under Section 1983 arises only upon

a showing of personal participation by the

defendants. In order to be individually

liable under § 1983, individuals must

personally participate in an alleged rights

deprivation.

The court legitimately rejected this instruction for two

valid reasons. First, it was entirely redundant and

unnecessary. It was abundantly clear from the court’s

other instructions and the arguments of counsel that no one

was suggesting the jury find defendants Baker, Reeve, Wade

or Britton liable for something that some third party may

have done. Second, and more importantly, the instruction

would have conflicted with other necessary and appropriate

instructions.

In Instruction No. 11 the jury was told that:

A person subjects another to the deprivation of

a constitutional right, within the meaning of

section 1983, if he does an affirmative act,

participates in another’s affirmative acts, or

omits to perform an act which he is legally

required to do that causes the deprivation of

which complaint is made. Moreover, personal

participation is not the only predicate for

section 1983 liability. Anyone who “causes”

any citizen to be subjected to a constitutional

deprivation is also liable. The requisite

causal connection can be established not only

by some kind of direct personal participation

in the deprivation, but also by setting in

motion a series of acts by others which the

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actor knows or reasonably should know would

cause others to inflict the constitutional

injury.

(Emphasis added.) This instruction, including the

underscored language, was taken verbatim from the Ninth

Circuit’s decision in Johnson v. Duffy, 588 F.2d 740, 743-

44 (9th Cir. 1978). In the thirty years since that

decision was published, not once has it been cited with

disapproval by the Ninth Circuit or any other circuit. To

the contrary, that language was recently quoted again with

approval in Wong v. U.S. Immigration and Naturalization

Serv., 373 F.3d 952, 966 (9th Cir. 2004). It is the law. 

Further, in Instruction No. 16, which both sides

agreed was a correct statement of the law, the jury was

properly instructed that defendant Griem could be liable in

a “supervisorial capacity” under certain circumstances. 

Defendants’ “personal participation” instruction would have

been at best confusing and at worst inconsistent with the

court’s other instructions.

The court accordingly finds no error in its jury

instructions which would justify a new trial on the issues

of liability.

C. Plaintiff’s Attorneys’ Alleged Misconduct

Plaintiff’s attorneys continually maintained that

plaintiff was “hogtied” to the grate in the cell. The

witnesses at trial all defined that term as the process of

binding one’s hands and feet together behind his back. 

That was not the way plaintiff was shackled. The

undisputed testimony was that although his feet were

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shackled together and his hands were shackled together

behind his back, his feet were not shackled to his hands. 

Notwithstanding this distinction, plaintiff’s attorneys

continued to argue that plaintiff was “hogtied.”

While others with less trial experience may

disagree, this court does not consider that to be

misconduct. Even if it were, it was certainly

insufficiently prejudicial to justify a new trial. The

jurors knew exactly what the testimony was and could judge

the credibility of plaintiff’s attorneys’ arguments for

themselves.

D. Weight of the Evidence

Defendants argue that the verdict was contrary to

the clear weight of the evidence. Counsel’s arguments here

are essentially the same as he made, and the jury

apparently rejected, at trial.

The arguments in support of the jury’s verdict are

set forth in plaintiff’s brief, were summarized in

plaintiff’s attorneys’ final arguments at trial, and will

not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that the fact that

the court may find defendants’ arguments more persuasive,

that the court may have been surprised by the verdict, or

even that the court may disagree with the verdict does not

constitute grounds to set it aside. There was sufficient

evidence to sustain the jury’s verdict on the issue of

liability of each of the individual defendants.

II. Damage Issues

A. Compensatory Damages

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The jury instructions which the court originally

planned to give included the following instruction:

The law which applies to this case authorizes

an award of nominal damages. If you find for

the plaintiff but you find that the plaintiff

has failed to prove damages as defined in these

instructions, you must award nominal damages.

Nominal damages may not exceed one dollar.

When plaintiff’s attorneys at the time of settling

instructions objected to this instruction, the court

withdrew it. (Trial Tr. Apr. 10, 2008 101:10-21.) This

instruction was a correct statement of the law. See Carey

v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 266 (1978) (“By making the

deprivation of such rights actionable for nominal damages

without proof of actual injury, the law recognizes the

importance to organized society that those rights be

scrupulously observed; but at the same time, it remains

true to the principle that substantial damages should be

awarded only to compensate actual injury or, in the case of

exemplary or punitive damages, to deter or punish malicious

deprivations of rights.”).

Without having time to fully research the

question, the court’s thinking at the time of acceding to

the request of plaintiff’s attorneys to withdraw the

instruction was that it is an instruction designed to

assist plaintiffs, not defendants, and if plaintiff’s

attorneys want to make the tactical decision to go for all

of their claimed damages or nothing they ought to be able

to do so. It turns out that other courts have agreed. See

Oliver v. Falla, 258 F.3d 1277, 1281 (11th Cir. 2001)

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(“[Plaintiff’s] counsel made a strategic decision to seek

compensatory and punitive damages only, probably thinking

that the jury would award nominal damages only if

[plaintiff] requested them.”); Azimi v. Jordan’s Meats,

Inc., 456 F.3d 228, 240 (1st Cir. 2006) (“Our rule is

plaintiff-friendly in the sense that it does not require

that plaintiffs make a strategic choice whether to ask for

a nominal damages instruction. Indeed, there are good

reasons why a plaintiff may choose not to give a jury the

‘out’ of awarding nominal damages as an alternative to

awarding compensatory damages.”).

When the court proposed putting the nominal

damages instruction back in after it allowed plaintiff to

have his punitive damages instruction back, plaintiff’s

attorney again “strenuously” objected to it, so the court

left it out. (Trial Tr. Apr. 10, 2008 129:7-16.) 

Unfortunately, however, this left the jury with no

explanation of what to do if they found for the plaintiff

on the issue of liability but believed defendants’ theory

that all of his injuries, as defined in the court’s

instructions, were sustained in the car accident and

various scuffles with firefighters and City police officers

before plaintiff was brought to the jail.

Although the court had withdrawn the nominal

damages instruction at plaintiff’s request, plaintiff

requested no modification to the punitive damages

instruction when it was reinserted. That instruction,

number 19, informed the jury that “[p]unitive damages may

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be awarded even if you award plaintiff only nominal, and

not compensatory, damages.” (Docket No. 123 (Jury

Instruction No. 19) (emphasis added).) Thus, the jury was

in effect told they could award “nominal” damages but were

given no instruction as to the permissible value of such an

award.

In Memphis Community School District v. Stachura,

477 U.S. 299 (1986), the Supreme Court explained that

“[n]ominal damages, and not damages based on some

undefinable ‘value’ of infringed rights, are the

appropriate means of ‘vindicating’ rights whose deprivation

has not caused actual, provable injury . . . .” Id. at,

308 n.11 (emphasis added). In the absence of an

instruction setting an award of nominal damages at $1.00,

the jury was left to chose “some undefinable ‘value’ [for

plaintiff’s] infringed rights” if it found that plaintiff’s

evidence of actual damages was not sufficient or credible. 

Id.

The jury’s confusion about whether it should

compensate plaintiff for the abstract value of his

constitutional rights became apparent when the jury

submitted the following question during deliberations:

On verdict form page #2 Question #2 the

question reads: Do you find that the

plaintiff proved by a preponderance of the

evidence that the excessive force was a

substantial factor in bringing about

plaintiff[’s] injury, harm or damages[?]

(1) What is Harm?

(2) If answer “Yes” to any one of

“Injury,” “Harm” or 

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1 The verdict form, which was prepared by plaintiff’s

attorneys, contributed to the confusion by its use of the word

"harm" in questions two and four, which the jury instructions

neither defined nor used.

11

 “Damages” = a “Yes”?1

(Docket No. 121 (Jury Notes 1).) When the court discussed

how to answer the jury’s question with counsel for both

parties, plaintiff’s counsel insisted that the court

explain that the three terms include constitutional

injuries:

THE COURT: All right. So do you think that

I should tell them that injuries mean

something different than harm and that harm

means something different than damages or do

you think I should tell them that injury,

harm and damages is all what is meant by

instruction No. 17? 

MS. DE VRIES: I think that if the term

“injuries” in instruction No. 17 would

include the harm from a constitutional

injury, then, yes, I think that that would be

a reasonable interpretation of harm in

instruction 17. 

THE COURT: So how -- if you were answering

question No. 17, what would you tell the

jury? 

MS. DE VRIES: I would tell the jury that the

disjunctive three words -- harm, injuries or

damages -- are described, as Your Honor said,

in instruction 17 with the clarification that

the injury we’re talking about here is not

just physical, but it is also a

constitutional injury. Because this is not

a personal injury matter, it’s a

constitutional violation case.

(Trial Tr. Apr. 15, 2008 17:7-24 (emphasis added).) While

defense counsel stated that the latter half of plaintiff’s

requested explanation was “unnecessary,” they did not draw

the court’s attention to the real problem with plaintiff’s

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requested explanation: an award for “constitutional

injuries” must be limited to $1.00. (Id. at 19:14-16.) 

In an effort to inform the jury that it could

render a verdict for plaintiff even if it did not find

actual damages--and to avoid using the word “nominal” that

plaintiff’s counsel so vehemently opposed--the court

instructed the jury in accordance with plaintiff’s request: 

The first question, what is harm? In the

context of this verdict form, harm has no

different meaning than injury or damages. .

. . I would invite your attention to

instruction No. 17, which is the one that

defines what may constitute injury or

damages. I would also remind you that in

this case, which arises under the

Constitution, injury includes not just

physical injuries, but constitutional

injuries as they are discussed in

instructions 10 and 11. Read all the

instructions together, though. Don’t just

isolate one or two instructions out of the

context of the rest of them. 

(Id. at 24:14-25-25:1-2.) The use of the term

“constitutional injuries”--combined with the instruction

allowing the jury to award nominal damages and the omission

of the $1.00 limit--invited the jury to award an unlimited

amount of damages based on the importance of plaintiff’s

constitutional rights in lieu of awarding compensatory

damages. That was error, plain and simple.

In Memphis Community School District, the Supreme

Court held that jury instructions “were improper because

they did not require the jury to focus on the loss actually

sustained by respondent . . . [but] invited the jury to

speculate on matters wholly detached from the real injury

occasioned respondent by the deprivation of the right [and]

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. . . might have led the jury to grant respondent damages

based on the ‘abstract value’ of the right to procedural due

process-a course directly barred by our decision in Carey.”

477 U.S. at 315-16. 

“When damages instructions are faulty and the

verdict does not reveal the means by which the jury

calculated damages, ‘[the] error in the charge is difficult,

if not impossible, to correct without retrial, in light of

the jury’s general verdict.’” Id. at 312 (citation omitted)

(alteration in original). While the “effect of the

erroneous instruction[s is] unknowable,” neither the jury’s

verdict nor the verdict form give the court confidence that

the jury intended the award of $20,000.00 to compensate

plaintiff for his actual injuries. Id. The court,

therefore, is faced with the very real possibility that the

jury believed that it could award an unlimited amount of

non-compensatory damages to “‘compensate’ [plaintiff] for

the abstract ‘value’ of his” constitutional rights. Id. at

312-13.

Under the circumstances, the court cannot allow

the compensatory damage award of $20,000 to stand. On the

other hand, it would be inappropriate for the court to

arbitrarily reduce the compensatory damages to one dollar. 

The only fair and viable alternative is to grant defendants’

motion for a new trial on the issue of damages.

B. Punitive Damages

“Courts reviewing punitive damages [are] to

consider three guideposts: (1) the degree of

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reprehensibility of the defendant’s misconduct; (2) the

disparity between the actual or potential harm suffered by

the plaintiff and the punitive damages award; and (3) the

difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury

and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable

cases.” State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538

U.S. 408, 418 (2003). In Instruction No. 19, the jury in

this case was similarly told that “[i]n considering punitive

damages, you may consider the degree of reprehensibility of

the defendants conduct and the relationship of any award of

punitive damages to any actual harm inflicted on the

plaintiff.”

Taking heed of the court’s instruction, the jury

may well have considered its finding of $20,000 “harm” in

arriving at the amount of punitive damages to be awarded. 

While punitive damages of $25,000 and $50,000, respectively,

might be regarded as having a rational relationship to

$20,000, the jury very well might not have considered it to

bear a rational relationship to the harm if measured by the

nominal damage standard of one dollar. Thus, the court

cannot conclude with any confidence that the jury’s punitive

damage awards are divorced from its flawed award of actual

damages.

Again, the court must conclude that the only fair

and viable remedy is to allow the jury, upon new trial, to

recalculate the amounts of punitive damages. This does not

mean that the second jury will be free to disregard the

first jury’s determination that some punitive damages should

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be imposed. Defendants have not persuaded the court that

there was any trial or instructional error sufficient to

overturn the jury’s finding of punitive damages against each

defendant – only the amount of such damages.

III. Conclusion

Defendants are entitled to a new trial on the

issues of damages only. The jury’s determinations of

liability and entitlement to punitive damages must remain

intact. Upon new trial, the jury must be informed that each

of the defendants have been determined to be liable to

plaintiff on both his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment claims

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and that their job is only to

determine the amount of damages proximately resulting from

the violations. They must be instructed that if plaintiff

fails to prove any damages resulting from such violations,

they must award nominal damages not to exceed one dollar. 

Similarly, on the question of punitive damages they must be

told that it is their job to determine only the amount of

punitive damages to be assessed against each of the

defendants, not whether such damages should be awarded.

FURTHER PROCEEDINGS

The court recognizes that reasonable minds might

differ as to both the determination to grant defendants’

motion for new trial on the issues of damages and the

determination to deny the motion on the issues of liability. 

If the Court of Appeals in going to disagree with any pert

of this Order, it would greatly benefit the parties and the

court to know that before all the time and effort are

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expended on a new trial. Accordingly, the court would

consider certifying this Order for immediate appeal pursuant

to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) if either or both sides should wish

to pursue such an appeal.

This matter will be set for Status Conference on

Monday, July 14, 2008. At that time, counsel for both sides

shall be prepared to inform the court whether they wish to

pursue an immediate appeal from this Order. If so, they

shall present to the court a form of Order certifying such

appeal. If not, they shall be prepared to set the matter

down for new trial on the issues of damages as discussed

above.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that defendants’ motion

for new trial be, and the same hereby is, DENIED on the

issues of liability, but GRANTED on the issues of the amount

of compensatory and punitive damages;

AND IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this matter be set

for Status Conference at 2:00 p.m., on Monday, July 14,

2008.

DATED: June 25, 2008

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