PROPOSED PRELIMINARY JURY INSTRUCTIONS – No. 17-cv-00600-LB

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

San Francisco Division

RENEE MARIE LEPAGE,

Plaintiff,

v.

COUNTY OF NAPA, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 17-cv-00600-LB

PROPOSED PRELIMINARY JURY 

INSTRUCTIONS

The court proposes the attached preliminary jury instructions.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: September 26, 2019

______________________________________

LAUREL BEELER

United States Magistrate Judge

Case 3:17-cv-00600-LB Document 125 Filed 09/26/19 Page 1 of 8
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE

On December 1, 2015, Plaintiff Renee LePage was in Courtroom E of the Napa County 

Superior Courthouse. She was wearing a neck brace from a recent spinal surgery. While Ms. 

LePage was present in the courtroom, an incident occurred and the courtroom was ordered cleared.

Defendant Deputy Sheriff Timothy Reid was in the adjacent courtroom. He heard a call for 

assistance over the radio. He immediately walked quickly to Courtroom E. As Ms. LePage was 

exiting Courtroom E, she encountered defendant Reid in the vestibule area just outside the 

courtroom.

The parties disagree on what happened. Ms. LePage claims that defendant Reid made eye 

contact with her, approached her directly from the hallway, and slammed her with his heavy, 

bullet-proof vest, pushing her into the door, and (when she bounced back), grabbed both of her 

upper arms with both of his hands and forcefully threw her back against the same door.

Deputy Reid denies he battered or used excessive force on anyone as he entered the courtroom. 

Deputy Reid asserts he moved through a crowd of people exiting to respond and gain entry into 

the courtroom to render assistance.

Ms. LePage claims the incident with defendant Reid caused her serious pain, loss, and 

emotional suffering. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages against Deputy Reid and his 

employers, the Napa County Sheriff’s Department and the County of Napa. Deputy Reid denies 

Ms. LePage’s medical issues are a result of contact between her and Deputy Reid.

1.3: DUTY OF JURY

Members of the jury: You are now the jury in this case. It is my duty to instruct you on the 

law.

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.

At the end of the trial I will give you final instructions. It is the final instructions that will 

govern your duties.

Please do not read into these instructions, or anything I may say or do, that I have an opinion 

regarding the evidence or what your verdict should be.

Case 3:17-cv-00600-LB Document 125 Filed 09/26/19 Page 2 of 8
PROPOSED PRELIMINARY JURY INSTRUCTIONS – No. 17-cv-00600-LB 3

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1.5: CLAIMS AND DEFENSES

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

at trial.

Plaintiff Renee LePage asserts that defendant Reid used excessive force against her in the 

vestibule area outside a courtroom at the Napa County courthouse. Ms. LePage brings her claims 

under the United States Constitution, federal and California civil rights laws (42 U.S.C. § 1983 

and the Bane Act), and California common law (the battery and negligence claims). The plaintiff 

has the burden of proving these claims by a preponderance of the evidence.

The defendants deny these claims. The defendants have raised a number of defenses, including 

that Deputy Reid acted reasonably. The defendants have the burden of proof on their affirmative 

defenses.

The plaintiff denies defendants’ affirmative defenses.

1.6: BURDEN OF PROOF — PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE

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

of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim or affirmative 

defense is more probably true than not true.

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

1.9: 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 that are admitted into evidence;

3. any facts to which the lawyers have agreed; and

4. any facts that I may instruct you to accept as proved.

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1.10: 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 may say in their opening statements, 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 is excluded or stricken, or that you are instructed to disregard, is not 

evidence and must not be considered. In addition some evidence may be received only 

for a limited purpose; when I instruct you to consider certain evidence only for a 

limited purpose, you must do so and you may not consider that evidence for any other 

purpose.

4. Anything you may see or hear when the court was not in session is not evidence. You 

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

1.12: 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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1.13: 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 that evidence. That means when you are deciding the case, you must not consider the 

stricken evidence for any purpose.

1.14: 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.

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, if any;

5. the witness’s bias or prejudice, if any;

6. whether other evidence contradicted the witness’s testimony;

7. the reasonableness of the witness’s testimony in light of all the evidence; and

8. any other factors that bear on believability.

Sometimes a witness may say something that is not consistent with something else he or she 

said. Sometimes different witnesses will give different versions of what happened. People often 

forget things or make mistakes in what they remember. Also, two people may see the same event 

but remember it differently. You may consider these differences, but do not decide that testimony 

is untrue just because it differs from other testimony.

However, if you decide that a witness has deliberately testified untruthfully about something 

important, you may choose not to believe anything that witness said. On the other hand, if you 

think the witness testified untruthfully about some things but told the truth about others, you may 

accept the part you think is true and ignore the rest.

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

who testify. What is important is how believable the witnesses were, and how much weight you 

think their testimony deserves.

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1.15: 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 email, text messaging, or any internet 

chat room, blog, website or application, including but not limited to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, 

Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, or any other forms of social media. 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, and how long you expect the trial to last. 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 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,although I have no information that there will be news reports 

about this case; do not do any 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. Do not visit or view any place discussed in this case, and do not use 

Internet programs or other devices to search for or view any place discussed during the trial. Also, 

do not do any research about this case, the law, or the people involved — including the parties, the 

witnesses or the lawyers — until you have been excused as jurors. If you happen to read or hear 

anything touching on this case in the media, turn away and report it to me as soon as possible.

These rules protect each party’s right to have this case decided only on evidence that has been 

presented here in court. Witnesses here in court take an oath to tell the truth, and the accuracy of 

their testimony is tested through the trial process. If you do any research or investigation outside 

the courtroom, or gain any information through improper communications, then your verdict may 

be influenced by inaccurate, incomplete or misleading information that has not been tested by the 

trial process. Each of the parties is entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, and if you decide the 

case based on information not presented in court, you will have denied the parties a fair trial. 

Remember, you have taken an oath to follow the rules, and it is very important that you follow 

these rules.

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.

1.17: NO TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE TO JURY

I urge you to pay close attention to the trial testimony as it is given. During deliberations you 

will not have a transcript of the trial testimony.

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1.18: 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 go to the jury room to decide the case. Do not let notetaking 

distract you. When you leave, your notes should be left in the courtroom. No one will read your 

notes.

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 

other jurors.

1.19: QUESTIONS TO WITNESSES BY JURORS

You will be allowed to propose written questions to witnesses after the lawyers have 

completed their questioning of each witness. You may propose questions in order to clarify the 

testimony, but you are not to express any opinion about the testimony or argue with a witness. If 

you propose any questions, remember that your role is that of a neutral fact finder, not an 

advocate.

Before I excuse each witness, I will offer you the opportunity to write out a question on a form 

provided by the court. Do not sign the question. I will review the question with the attorneys to 

determine if it is legally proper.

There are some proposed questions that I will not permit, or will not ask in the wording 

submitted by the juror. This might happen either due to the rules of evidence or other legal 

reasons, or because the question is expected to be answered later in the case. If I do not ask a 

proposed question, or if I rephrase it, do not speculate as to the reasons. Do not give undue weight 

to questions you or other jurors propose. You should evaluate the answers to those questions in the 

same manner you evaluate all of the other evidence.

By giving you the opportunity to propose questions, I am not requesting or suggesting that you 

do so. It will often be the case that a lawyer has not asked a question because it is legally 

objectionable or because a later witness may be addressing that subject.

1.20: 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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1.21: 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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