Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_14-cv-00846/USCOURTS-cand-3_14-cv-00846-7/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 28:1332 Diversity-Employment Discrimination

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United States District Court 

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

San Francisco Division 

JOSEPH A SMITH, 

Plaintiff, 

v. 

EQUINOX HOLDINGS, INC., et al., 

Defendants. 

Case No. 3:14-cv-00846-LB 

PRELIMINARY JURY INSTRUCTIONS 

 

Dated: July 29, 2015 ______________________________________ 

LAUREL BEELER 

United States Magistrate Judge 

 

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1.1B DUTY OF JURY 

Ladies and gentlemen: You are now the jury in this case. It is my duty to instruct you on the 

law. 

 You must not infer from these instructions or from anything I may say or do as indicating that 

I have an opinion regarding the evidence or what your verdict should be. 

It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. To those facts you will apply 

the law as I give it to you. You must follow the law as I give it to you whether you agree with it 

or not. And you must not be influenced by any personal likes or dislikes, opinions, prejudices, or 

sympathy. That means that you must decide the case solely on the evidence before you. You will 

recall that you took an oath to do so. 

In following my instructions, you must follow all of them and not single out some and ignore 

others; they are all important. 

 

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1.2 CLAIMS AND DEFENSES 

To help you follow the evidence, I will give you a brief summary of the positions of the 

parties: 

Plaintiff claims that Defendants Equinox Holdings, Inc., Equinox Fitness Union Street, Inc., 

Equinox Pine Street, Inc. (collectively, the “Defendant”) misclassified him as an exempt employee 

and did not pay overtime when he worked more than 8 hours in a day or more than 40 hours in a 

week. Plaintiff claims that he was not provided with timely, off-duty meal and rest periods and 

that he is owed compensation for missed breaks. Plaintiff claims that Defendant terminated him in 

violation of public policy underlying California law. Plaintiff also claims that Defendant made 

defamatory statements about him after his termination. 

Plaintiff has the burden of proving these claims. 

Defendant denies these claims and also contends that Plaintiff was an “exempt” employee and 

that it was not required to pay him overtime and or to provide meal and rest breaks. 

Defendant has the burden of proof on its affirmative defense that Plaintiff was an “exempt” 

employee, including showing that the Plaintiff qualified for an exemption from California’s 

overtime and meal and rest break laws. 

 

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5006. NONPERSON PARTY 

Corporations EQUINOX HOLDINGS, INC., EQUINOX FITNESS UNION STREET, INC., 

and EQUINOX PINE STREET, INC., (collectively, “Equinox”) are parties in this lawsuit. 

Equinox is entitled to the same fair and impartial treatment that you would give to an individual. 

You must decide this case with the same fairness that you would use if you were deciding the case 

between individuals. 

When I use words like “person” or “he” or “she” in these instructions to refer to a party, those 

instructions also apply to Equinox. 

 

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1.3 BURDEN OF PROOF—PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE 

When a party has the burden of proof on any claim or affirmative defense by a preponderance 

of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim is more probably 

true than not true. 

You should base your decision on all of the evidence, regardless of which party presented it. 

 

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1.6 WHAT IS EVIDENCE 

The evidence you are to consider in deciding what the facts are consists of: 

1. the sworn testimony of any witness; 

2. the exhibits which are received into evidence; and 

3. any facts to which the lawyers have agreed. 

 

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1.7 WHAT IS NOT EVIDENCE 

In reaching your verdict, you may consider only the testimony and exhibits received into 

evidence. Certain things are not evidence, and you may not consider them in deciding what the 

facts are. I will list them for you: 

(1) Arguments and statements by lawyers are not evidence. The lawyers are not witnesses. 

What they have said in their opening statements, will say in their closing arguments, and at 

other times is intended to help you interpret the evidence, but it is not evidence. If the facts as 

you remember them differ from the way the lawyers have stated them, your memory of them 

controls. 

(2) Questions and objections by lawyers are not evidence. Attorneys have a duty to their 

clients to object when they believe a question is improper under the rules of evidence. You 

should not be influenced by the objection or by the court’s ruling on it. 

(3) Testimony that has been excluded or stricken, or that you have been instructed to disregard, 

is not evidence and must not be considered. In addition sometimes testimony and exhibits are 

received only for a limited purpose; when I give a limiting instruction, you must follow it. 

(4) Anything you may have seen or heard when the court was not in session is not evidence. 

You are to decide the case solely on the evidence received at the trial. 

 

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1.8 EVIDENCE FOR LIMITED PURPOSE 

Some evidence may be admitted for a limited purpose only. 

When I instruct you that an item of evidence has been admitted for a limited purpose, you 

must consider it only for that limited purpose and for no other. 

 

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1.9 DIRECT AND CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE 

Evidence may be direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence is direct proof of a fact, such as 

testimony by a witness about what that witness personally saw or heard or did. Circumstantial 

evidence is proof of one or more facts from which you could find another fact. You should 

consider both kinds of evidence. The law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to 

either direct or circumstantial evidence. It is for you to decide how much weight to give to any 

evidence. 

By way of example, if you wake up in the morning and see that the sidewalk is wet, you may 

find from that fact that it rained during the night. However, other evidence, such as a turned on 

garden hose, may provide a different explanation for the presence of water on the sidewalk. 

Therefore, before you decide that a fact has been proved by circumstantial evidence, you must 

consider all the evidence in the light of reason, experience, and common sense. 

 

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1.10 RULING ON OBJECTIONS 

There are rules of evidence that control what can be received into evidence. When a lawyer 

asks a question or offers an exhibit into evidence and a lawyer on the other side thinks that it is not 

permitted by the rules of evidence, that lawyer may object. If I overrule the objection, the question 

may be answered or the exhibit received. If I sustain the objection, the question cannot be 

answered, and the exhibit cannot be received. Whenever I sustain an objection to a question, you 

must ignore the question and must not guess what the answer might have been. 

Sometimes I may order that evidence be stricken from the record and that you disregard or 

ignore the evidence. That means that when you are deciding the case, you must not consider the 

evidence that I told you to disregard. 

 

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1.11 CREDIBILITY OF WITNESSES 

In deciding the facts in this case, you may have to decide which testimony to believe and 

which testimony not to believe. You may believe everything a witness says, or part of it, or none 

of it. Proof of a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of witnesses who testify about it. 

In considering the testimony of any witness, you may take into account: 

(1) the opportunity and ability of the witness to see or hear or know the things testified to; 

(2) the witness’s memory; 

(3) the witness’s manner while testifying; 

(4) the witness’s interest in the outcome of the case and any bias or prejudice; 

(5) whether other evidence contradicted the witness’s testimony; 

(6) the reasonableness of the witness’s testimony in light of all the evidence; and 

(7) any other factors that bear on believability. 

The weight of the evidence as to a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of witnesses 

who testify about it. 

 

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1.12 CONDUCT OF THE JURY 

I will now say a few words about your conduct as jurors. 

First, keep an open mind throughout the trial, and do not decide what the verdict should be 

until you and your fellow jurors have completed your deliberations at the end of the case. 

Second, because you must decide this case based only on the evidence received in the case and 

on my instructions as to the law that applies, you must not be exposed to any other information 

about the case or to the issues it involves during the course of your jury duty. Thus, until the end 

of the case or unless I tell you otherwise: 

Do not communicate with anyone in any way and do not let anyone else 

communicate with you in any way about the merits of the case or anything to do 

with it. This includes discussing the case in person, in writing, by phone or 

electronic means, via e-mail, text messaging, or any Internet chat room, blog, Web 

site or other feature. This applies to communicating with your fellow jurors until I 

give you the case for deliberation, and it applies to communicating with everyone 

else including your family members, your employer, the media or press, and the 

people involved in the trial, although you may notify your family and your 

employer that you have been seated as a juror in the case. But, if you are asked or 

approached in any way about your jury service or anything about this case, you 

must respond that you have been ordered not to discuss the matter and to report the 

contact to the court. 

Because you will receive all the evidence and legal instruction you properly may 

consider to return a verdict: do not read, watch, or listen to any news or media 

accounts or commentary about the case or anything to do with it; do not do any 

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research, such as consulting dictionaries, searching the Internet or using other 

reference materials; and do not make any investigation or in any other way try to 

learn about the case on your own. 

The law requires these restrictions to ensure the parties have a fair trial based on the same 

evidence that each party has had an opportunity to address. A juror who violates these restrictions 

jeopardizes the fairness of these proceedings[, and a mistrial could result that would require the 

entire trial process to start over]. If any juror is exposed to any outside information, please notify 

the court immediately. 

 

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1.13 NO TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE TO JURY 

During deliberations, you will have to make your decision based on what you recall of the 

evidence. You will not have a transcript of the trial. I urge you to pay close attention to the 

testimony as it is given. 

If at any time you cannot hear or see the testimony, evidence, questions or arguments, let me 

know so that I can correct the problem. 

 

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1.14 TAKING NOTES 

If you wish, you may take notes to help you remember the evidence. If you do take notes, 

please keep them to yourself until you and your fellow jurors go to the jury room to decide the 

case. Do not let note-taking distract you. When you leave, your notes should be left in the 

courtroom. No one will read your notes. They will be destroyed at the conclusion of the case. 

Whether or not you take notes, you should rely on your own memory of the evidence. Notes 

are only to assist your memory. You should not be overly influenced by your notes or those of 

your fellow jurors. 

 

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1.18 BENCH CONFERENCES AND RECESSES 

From time to time during the trial, it may become necessary for me to talk with the attorneys 

out of the hearing of the jury, either by having a conference at the bench when the jury is present 

in the courtroom, or by calling a recess. Please understand that while you are waiting, we are 

working. The purpose of these conferences is not to keep relevant information from you, but to 

decide how certain evidence is to be treated under the rules of evidence and to avoid confusion 

and error. 

Of course, we will do what we can to keep the number and length of these conferences to a 

minimum. I may not always grant an attorney’s request for a conference. Do not consider my 

granting or denying a request for a conference as any indication of my opinion of the case or of 

what your verdict should be. 

 

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1.19 OUTLINE OF TRIAL 

Trials proceed in the following way: First, each side may make an opening statement. An 

opening statement is not evidence. It is simply an outline to help you understand what that party 

expects the evidence will show. A party is not required to make an opening statement. 

The plaintiff will then present evidence, and counsel for the defendant may cross-examine. 

Then the defendant may present evidence, and counsel for the plaintiff may cross-examine. 

After the evidence has been presented, I will instruct you on the law that applies to the case 

and the attorneys will make closing arguments. 

After that, you will go to the jury room to deliberate on your verdict. 

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