[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 19-11907

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 3:09-cv-13482-WGY-HTS

PATRICIA HARRIS, 

as personal representative of the Estate 

of Gerald Harris, 

 Plaintiff - Cross

 Appellant - Appellee,

versus

R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO COMPANY, 

PHILIP MORRIS USA, INC., 

 Defendants - Cross

 Appellees - Appellants,

LORILLARD TOBACCO COMPANY,

et al.,

 Defendants.

________________________

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

________________________

(November 20, 2020)

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Before WILSON, NEWSOM, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: 

This is an “Engle progeny” case—we’re told it’s one of the last that we’re 

likely to see. For the uninitiated, “Engle” refers to an entire generation’s worth of 

litigation in which Florida-resident smokers (or, as in this case, their personal 

representatives) have sought recovery from tobacco companies for cigarette-related 

injuries. See, e.g., Engle v. Liggett Grp., Inc., 945 So. 2d 1246 (Fla. 2006). We’ll 

describe the Engle-related cases’ sprawling procedural history in more detail, but 

for present purposes, suffice it to say that the litigation has unfolded in three 

“Phases”: In Phase I, a state-court jury determined, with respect to an entire class 

of smokers, that in manufacturing and marketing nicotine-based cigarettes the 

tobacco companies engaged in tortious misconduct. In Phase II, the same jury 

found that the companies’ misconduct injured each of three representative 

plaintiffs and awarded them damages. Then, in Phase III—following 

decertification of the class—thousands of individual smokers brought suits for 

their own injuries. 

Importantly here, if an individual Phase III plaintiff can demonstrate that he 

was a member of the original Engle class, he needn’t prove from scratch that the 

tobacco-company defendants tortiously manufactured and marketed their products; 

rather, upon proving class membership, he is entitled to the preclusive effect of the 

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Phase I jury’s liability findings. To demonstrate that he is a member of the Engle

class, the plaintiff has to show, among other things, that he suffered from a medical 

condition that both (1) was caused by cigarette addiction and (2) manifested on or 

before the class cut-off date—November 21, 1996. 

Patricia Harris brought an individual Phase III suit on behalf of her deceased 

husband, Gerald Harris. She sought the benefit of the Phase I jury’s findings, 

arguing that Mr. Harris was a member of the original class based on two medical 

conditions. Her Phase III jury found that one of Mr. Harris’s conditions—oralcavity cancer—was caused by cigarette addiction but did not manifest on or before 

the class cut-off date and that the other condition—heart disease—manifested on or 

before the class cut-off date but was not caused by cigarette addiction. Although 

neither condition alone satisfied both requirements of class membership, the 

district court nonetheless concluded that Mr. Harris was a class member, gave Mrs. 

Harris the benefit of the Phase I jury’s liability findings, and entered judgment on a 

substantial verdict in her favor. After careful review, we reverse. 

I

A

More than 25 years ago now, a group of plaintiffs, one of whom was named 

Howard Engle, filed a class-action suit in Florida state court against several 

tobacco companies, including the defendants here, R.J. Reynolds and Philip 

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Morris. These “Engle” plaintiffs asserted various tort claims, including, as 

relevant for our purposes, negligence, product defect, fraudulent concealment, and 

conspiracy to fraudulently conceal. See Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1257 n.4. They 

alleged that the companies’ tortious conduct caused them to suffer from a number 

of diseases and medical conditions. See id. at 1256, 1276–77. 

The state trial court certified a class of injured smokers and planned to 

divide the jury trial into three phases. During Phase I, the jury would decide issues 

common to the entire class, such as whether the tobacco companies acted 

tortiously, whether nicotine cigarettes are addictive, and whether cigarette 

addiction causes certain medical conditions. If the class plaintiffs proved tortious 

conduct, addictiveness, and general causation during Phase I, the trial would 

proceed to Phases II and III. During Phase II, the same jury would decide whether 

the companies’ tortious conduct specifically injured three representative plaintiffs, 

and if so, the amount of damages to which each was entitled. During Phase III, the 

same jury would decide whether the companies’ tortious conduct injured the 

remaining unnamed class members, and if so, what their damages were. See 

Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1256–58. 

Phases I and II proceeded according to plan. During Phase I, the jury found, 

among other things, that the tobacco companies were negligent, had placed 

defective and unreasonably dangerous products on the market, fraudulently 

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concealed material information, and conspired to fraudulently conceal material 

information. Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1277. The Phase I jury further found that 

nicotine cigarettes are addictive and that cigarette addiction causes 20 medical 

conditions—including, as relevant here, heart disease, oral-cavity cancer, COPD, 

and lung cancer. Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1277. During Phase II, the jury found that 

the companies’ tortious conduct injured each of the three representative 

plaintiffs—including one who will play a role in this case, Angie Della Vecchia—

and awarded those three plaintiffs a collective $12.7 million. Engle, 945 So. 2d at 

1257, 1276. 

Before Phase III commenced, the tobacco companies appealed. The Florida 

Supreme Court upheld the jury’s Phase I findings and, importantly for our 

purposes, its Phase II award to Della Vecchia. See Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1276–77. 

But with respect to the impending Phase III, the court held that “continued class 

action treatment [was] not feasible” because the same jury couldn’t be expected to 

decide the particularized claims of hundreds of thousands of remaining plaintiffs. 

Id. at 1277; see also id. at 1268. Accordingly, the court decertified the class, but 

only for the purpose of deciding the issues that had been left to Phase III—specific 

causation and damages. Id. at 1277. The court provided that any “plaintiffs within 

the class” could file individual actions within one year of its 2006 mandate. Id. In 

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those individual actions, class members would be entitled to the preclusive effect 

of the jury’s Phase I findings. Id. at 1269. 

In other words, a plaintiff suing the same tobacco-company defendants 

wouldn’t need to re-establish any of the Phase I findings so long as he could prove 

that he was a class member. Upon a plaintiff’s demonstration of class 

membership, his jury would be instructed that the Phase I findings were true as to 

him—i.e., that the defendants were negligent, placed defective and unreasonably 

dangerous cigarettes on the market, fraudulently concealed material information, 

and conspired to fraudulently conceal material information—and then would 

decide only the remaining issues of specific causation and damages. By contrast, a 

plaintiff who could not demonstrate class membership would have to prove every 

element of his claims from scratch, including that the companies had acted 

tortiously in the first place. 

How, then, would a Phase III plaintiff prove that he was a class member? 

The Florida Supreme Court provided a class definition: “The class consists of all 

Florida residents fitting the class description as of . . . [the final class-certification 

date,] November 21, 1996.” Id. at 1277. A Florida resident “fit[] the class 

description” if he suffered from a disease or medical condition that was “caused by 

[his] addiction to cigarettes.” Id. at 1274, 1277. Therefore, a plaintiff was an 

Engle class member if (in addition to being a Florida resident) he suffered from a 

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disease or medical condition (1) that was caused by cigarette addiction and (2) that 

manifested on or before the November 21, 1996 class cut-off date. See id.

B

Born in 1940, Gerald Harris smoked for most of his life. He suffered from 

heart disease, oral-cavity cancer, vocal-cord cancer, and lung cancer. He died of 

lung cancer in 2012. His wife Patricia Harris survived him and now serves as his 

personal representative.

Within one year of the Engle mandate, a group of plaintiffs including Mr. 

Harris brought Phase III individual actions against R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, 

and several other tobacco companies. They claimed to be original Engle class 

members and sought to benefit from the preclusive effect of the jury’s Phase I 

findings. Their cases were removed to federal court and severed. In 2013, after 

Mr. Harris died of lung cancer, Mrs. Harris filed an amended complaint in this 

individual case alleging negligence, product defect, fraudulent concealment, and 

conspiracy to fraudulently conceal. 

At trial, Mrs. Harris sought to establish her claims, in part, by relying on the 

Phase I findings, so she had to prove that Mr. Harris met the Engle class 

requirements. She argued that Mr. Harris was an Engle class member based on 

two medical conditions: heart disease and oral-cavity cancer.1

 As for Mr. Harris’s 

1 All parties agree that Mr. Harris was a Florida resident. 

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heart disease, the parties stipulated that it manifested on or before the class cut-off 

date, but the jury found that it was not caused by cigarette addiction. As for his 

oral-cavity cancer, the jury found that it was caused by cigarette addiction but did 

not manifest on or before the class cut-off date. 

Gerald Harris

Heart Disease Oral-cavity Cancer

Caused by cigarettes? No Yes

Timely manifested? Yes No

The district court then allowed the jury to proceed to answer several 

questions that would be relevant only if Mr. Harris were an Engle class member. 

In particular, the jury found that R.J. Reynolds’s and Philip Morris’s conduct 

injured Mr. Harris and that Mrs. Harris was entitled to approximately $1.7 million 

in damages. (The district court later reduced the award to $650,660.)

R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris moved for judgment in accordance with the 

jury’s verdict. They argued that because the jury found no medical condition that 

both (1) was caused by cigarette addiction and (2) manifested on or before the 

class cut-off date, Mr. Harris was not an Engle class member. And, they 

contended, because Mr. Harris was not a class member—and because Mrs. Harris 

had relied on the Phase I findings rather than proving those matters herself—there 

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was no basis for finding that the tobacco companies had engaged in tortious 

conduct. Accordingly, they said, they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law. 

The district court denied the companies’ motion and granted judgment for 

Mrs. Harris. It did so—even in the face of the class-membership disconnect that 

the companies emphasized—because of the Florida Supreme Court’s 

determination in the original Engle appeal that class representative Angie Della 

Vecchia was entitled to collect damages. The district court inferred from the 

Florida Supreme Court’s discussion of Della Vecchia’s case that the Engle class 

included anyone who had at least one medical condition that was caused by 

cigarette addiction and at least one condition that manifested on or before the class 

cut-off date—even when the two were different conditions. Accordingly, the 

district court concluded that when combined, Mr. Harris’s heart disease (which 

timely manifested but was not caused by cigarette addiction) and oral-cavity cancer 

(which was caused by cigarette addiction but did not timely manifest) met the class 

definition. R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris filed a renewed motion for judgment 

as a matter of law and a motion for a new trial, arguing that the district court had 

misread the Florida Supreme Court’s opinion. The district court denied both 

motions. 

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R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris appealed.2 

II

We must decide whether, despite having no medical condition that alone 

satisfied both requirements of Engle class membership, Mr. Harris was a class 

member and thus entitled to the preclusive effect of the Phase I findings. This is a 

question of law, so we review it de novo. See United States v. Futrell, 209 F.3d 

1286, 1288–89 (11th Cir. 2000).

A

The Full Faith and Credit Act requires federal courts to give the same effect

to state judicial proceedings as would be given in the state where the proceedings 

occurred. See 28 U.S.C. § 1738; Graham v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 857 F.3d 

1169, 1181 (11th Cir. 2017) (en banc). Among other things, that means we must 

give a state-court determination the same preclusive effect as it would command in 

the tribunals of the state where the determination was made. Walker v. R.J. 

Reynolds Tobacco Co., 734 F.3d 1278, 1286 (11th Cir. 2013). Here, Mrs. Harris 

sought to rely on the preclusive effect of the jury’s Phase I findings in Engle. So 

we must give those findings preclusive effect to the same extent that Florida courts 

would.

2 Mrs. Harris cross-appealed the district court’s ruling that she was not entitled to punitive 

damages on her negligence and product-defect claims. Because we will reverse the district 

court’s judgment in Mrs. Harris’s favor, we won’t reach her cross-appeal. 

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Florida courts give preclusive effect to the Phase I findings if—but only if—

a Phase III plaintiff was a member of the Engle class. See Philip Morris USA, Inc. 

v. Douglas, 110 So. 3d 419, 428–32 (Fla. 2013); see also Graham, 857 F.3d at

1182–86. That’s because if a plaintiff was a member of the Engle class, he was 

technically a party to the original action, and preclusion relieves him from having 

to re-prove the matters found there. The dispositive question, then, is whether Mr. 

Harris was a member of the Engle class. 

As the Engle litigation progressed, the class definition evolved. The initial 

class notice defined the class to comprise all United States citizens and residents 

who had “suffered, presently suffer or who ha[d] died from diseases and medical 

conditions caused by their addiction to cigarettes that contain nicotine.” Engle, 

945 So. 2d at 1274. A state appellate court restricted the class definition

geographically to cover only citizens and residents of Florida. See R.J. Reynolds

Tobacco Co. v. Engle, 672 So. 2d 39, 42 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1996). Eventually, 

questions arose as to the specific date by which someone had to have “suffered, 

presently suffer[ed], or . . . died” from a cigarette-caused medical condition in 

order to qualify for class membership. Another state appellate court held that, to 

qualify, a plaintiff must have suffered from that medical condition by the initial 

class-certification date, October 31, 1994. See Liggett Grp. Inc. v. Engle, 853 So. 

2d 434, 453 n.23 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003). On appeal, though, the Florida 

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Supreme Court pushed the date back. It held that the class “consists of all Florida 

residents fitting the class description as of . . . November 21, 1996.” Engle, 945

So. 2d at 1277. 

Accordingly, the Engle class ultimately comprised those Florida residents 

who suffered from a medical condition that both (1) was caused by cigarette 

addiction and (2) manifested on or before the class cut-off date of November 21, 

1996. Id. at 1274, 1277. The Florida Supreme Court has since repeatedly

reaffirmed this class definition in materially identical terms.3

 

Although Mr. Harris was a Florida resident, the jury did not find that he had 

a medical condition that both was caused by his cigarette addiction and manifested 

on or before November 21, 1996. Instead, the jury found that he had heart disease 

that manifested on or before that date but was not caused by his cigarette addiction, 

3 In 2013, for instance, the court referred to the class as comprising Florida residents who “on or 

before November 21, 1996, suffered from a disease or medical condition legally caused by 

addiction to cigarettes.” Douglas, 110 So. 3d at 426 n.4 (quotation marks omitted). More 

recently, in 2016, the court described the class’s parameters in these terms: 

“[T]he requirements for class membership are: (1) that the plaintiff was a Florida 

resident, (2) that he or she either suffered or was suffering from a smoking related 

illness before November 21, 1996, and (3) that his or her addiction to nicotine 

caused the disease.” The “key point in determining Engle class membership,” as 

stated by the [appellate court] based on the correct interpretation of this Court’s 

decision in Engle, “is pinpointing when the plaintiff began ‘suffering’ from the 

smoking-related illness.”

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Ciccone, 190 So. 3d 1028, 1040 (Fla. 2016) (quoting R.J. Reynolds 

Tobacco Co. v. Ciccone, 123 So. 3d 604, 615 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2013)); see also id. at 1031 

(describing the class as requiring that “the smoker ‘have suffered’ or be ‘presently suffering’ 

from a tobacco-related disease or medical condition as of the cut-off date”). 

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and oral-cavity cancer that was caused by his cigarette addiction but did not

manifest on or before that date. So as a matter of elementary logic, he was not a 

member of the Engle class. QED.

B

There’s a twist, though, that results from the Florida Supreme Court’s 

treatment of class representative Angie Della Vecchia in its original Engle 

decision. Della Vecchia was one of the original class representatives, meaning that 

she was a party to the Phase I trial and that the same jury that had found that the 

companies engaged in misconduct also found, during Phase II, that their 

misconduct caused her injury and that she was entitled to a monetary award. 

Based on its reading of the Florida Supreme Court’s opinion, the district court here 

concluded that Della Vecchia met the requirements for class membership despite 

“a mismatch between the disease that timely manifested (COPD) and the disease 

for which legal cause was found (lung cancer).” The district court so concluded 

because, in its brief discussion of Della Vecchia’s case, the Florida Supreme Court

(1) never explicitly said that Della Vecchia’s timely-manifesting COPD was 

caused by cigarette addiction, (2) acknowledged that Della Vecchia’s cigarettecaused lung cancer was “diagnosed” after the class cut-off date, and yet (3) 

nonetheless upheld her damages award. See Engle, 945 So. 2d at 1255, 1276. 

Accordingly, the district court concluded that anyone with at least one medical 

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condition caused by cigarettes and another manifesting on or before the class cutoff date satisfies the Engle class requirements. On this basis, the court held that 

Mr. Harris’s heart disease and oral-cavity cancer could similarly be combined to 

make him a class member.

For multiple reasons, we disagree with the district court’s conclusion that the 

Florida Supreme Court’s treatment of Della Vecchia requires treating Mr. Harris as 

a class member despite the disconnect between cigarette-causation (yes as to oralcavity cancer, no as to heart disease) and timely manifestation (yes as to heart 

disease, no as to oral-cavity cancer). 

For starters, as we read its opinion, the Florida Supreme Court pretty clearly 

seemed to think that Della Vecchia had at least one—and quite possibly two—

medical conditions that met both Engle class requirements. First, lung cancer: The 

Phase II jury had expressly found that Della Vecchia’s lung cancer was caused by 

cigarette addiction. The jury was not asked about a manifestation date, but the

Florida Supreme Court went out of its way to explain that although Della 

Vecchia’s lung cancer was diagnosed in 1997, the “critical event” was “when the 

disease or condition first manifested itself”—and then to emphasize that she was 

having lung problems “prior to the time of certification.” Id. at 1276 (emphasis 

added). The only point in drawing the diagnosis-manifestation distinction would 

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have been to establish that Della Vecchia’s cigarette-caused lung cancer 

manifested in time, thus satisfying both class requirements.

4

Second, and separately, the Florida Supreme Court’s opinion suggests that it 

thought that Della Vecchia’s COPD—which is one of the medical conditions that 

the Engle Phase I jury found to be caused by cigarette addiction, see Engle, 945 

So. 2d at 1277—also met both class requirements. The court explained that her 

COPD manifested “prior to [the class cut-off date]” and was “tobacco related.” Id.

at 1255. If the court thought that Della Vecchia’s COPD was caused by something 

other than cigarettes, it likely wouldn’t have called it “tobacco related.”5

 

So—combining the first and second points—while the district court’s 

conclusion here depended entirely on the assumption that Della Vecchia had no

medical condition that alone qualified her for class membership, the Florida 

Supreme Court’s own decision indicates that, in fact, she had two.

6

 

4 Indeed, the Florida Supreme Court has since interpreted the Engle court’s discussion of Della 

Vecchia’s lung cancer as proof that “the plaintiff does not need to have been formally diagnosed 

or know that the symptoms were tobacco-related prior to” the class cut-off date to satisfy the 

timing requirement. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Ciccone, 190 So. 3d 1028, 1041 (Fla. 2016);

see also Damianakis v. Philip Morris USA Inc., 155 So. 3d 453, 462–63 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 

2015) (citing Della Vecchia for the proposition that “the critical fact was not diagnosis but 

manifestation”).

5 The Florida Supreme Court appears to use the terms “tobacco-related” and “caused by 

smoking” interchangeably. See, e.g., Ciccone, 190 So. 3d at 1036. 

6 Or perhaps even three. The Florida Supreme Court also said that Della Vecchia’s “tobacco 

related” hypertension manifested before the class cut-off date. We don’t include it in our 

analysis because it’s unclear whether hypertension is an Engle-qualifying medical condition. 

One qualifying medical condition is coronary heart disease, “including . . . blood vessel 

damage.” See Engle Phase I Verdict Form (Fla. 11th Cir. Ct. July 7, 1999). Hypertension 

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Angie Della Vecchia

Lung Cancer COPD

Caused by cigarettes? Yes Yes

Timely manifested? Yes Yes

Moreover, and in any event, the Florida Supreme Court’s brief discussion of 

Della Vecchia’s class membership reads as dicta. To begin, the issue of Della 

Vecchia’s class membership was never properly raised or litigated. “[T]he 

defendants,” the court explained, “did not argue that . . . Della Vecchia [was] not 

[a] proper member[] of the class because of the class cut-off date.” 945 So. 2d at 

1256 n.2. Furthermore, so far as we can tell, Della Vecchia’s class membership 

had no legal consequence (which might explain why the defendants there didn’t 

bother to contest it). The whole point of determining whether someone is a 

member of the Engle class is to determine whether he was—in the eyes of the 

law—a party to Phase I and thus entitled to rely on its liability findings. Della 

Vecchia, as a named class representative, was indisputably a party to Phase I. The 

Florida Supreme Court was thus constrained to conclude that the Phase I findings 

applied in her case. Accordingly, its brief discussion of Della Vecchia’s case 

shouldn’t serve as a definitive guide to deciphering class membership—especially 

means high blood pressure, which describes the force that blood exerts against the walls of blood 

vessels. 

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where it would require ignoring the plain language and import of the court’s own 

class definition.7

Finally, the district court’s reading of Engle—under which a plaintiff 

qualifies for class membership provided that he has one condition that is caused by 

cigarette addiction and another one that timely manifests—would generate bizarre

results. Under the district court’s theory, a plaintiff would, for example, be entitled 

to the full preclusive effect of a 1999 jury’s findings about the tobacco companies’ 

conduct even if he didn’t smoke his first cigarette until 2006—after the companies 

had changed their products to comply with all applicable legal duties—so long as 

in 1996 he had some other qualifying medical condition caused by something 

wholly unrelated to smoking. It seems to us inconceivable that the Florida 

Supreme Court meant to sanction such a regime.

* * *

7 It appears that the Florida Supreme Court addressed Della Vecchia’s class membership only 

because the state appellate court had assumed that “[c]lass membership is a prerequisite to 

participating in and receiving the benefits of a class action trial.” Liggett Grp. Inc. v. Engle, 853 

So. 2d 434, 453 n.23 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003). To support this proposition, the appellate court 

cited a single case from a district court in Michigan that was about the inapposite question 

whether a class definition was sufficiently precise to determine which unnamed plaintiffs were 

members of the class. See id. (citing Garrish v. United Auto., Aerospace & Agric. Workers of

Am., 149 F. Supp. 2d 326, 331 (E.D. Mich. 2001)). The answer to the question whether all 

named plaintiffs need to qualify for membership in the class seems to be no. See, e.g., 7A 

Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 1761 (3d ed. 2020) (“[I]f the 

action is brought by . . . several representative parties, it only is necessary that one of them be a 

qualified member of the class as long as the other prerequisites of Rule 23(a) are satisfied.”).

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Mr. Harris had no medical condition that both was caused by cigarette 

addiction and manifested on or before the class cut-off date. Accordingly, he 

wasn’t an Engle class member, and nothing in the Florida Supreme Court’s 

treatment of Angie Della Vecchia requires us to conclude otherwise. And because 

Mr. Harris wasn’t a class member, Florida courts wouldn’t give preclusive effect to 

the Engle Phase I findings in this case. Under the Full Faith and Credit Act, we 

don’t either. 

Without the preclusive effect of the Phase I findings, Mrs. Harris has failed 

to prove essential elements of her claims. Most fundamentally, she failed to 

demonstrate that the tobacco-company defendants acted tortiously. Instead of 

pleading and proving that R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris were negligent or made 

defective products, she relied exclusively on “the Engle Phase I findings [to] 

conclusively establish” their tortious conduct and then “br[ought] this action upon 

the limited remaining issues in dispute.” Without those Phase I findings, Mrs. 

Harris failed to prove the defendants’ misconduct. Accordingly, the defendants are 

entitled to judgment as a matter of law.8

 

8 Mrs. Harris now requests a new trial to try to satisfy those elements with new evidence. But 

she already had the opportunity to do just that, either at the same trial or by requesting two 

separate trials on two alternative theories of liability. We can’t allow parties to proceed to a 

verdict and then decide to restart the litigation because they want to try a different tack. See 11 

Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 2805 (3d ed. 2020) (explaining 

that as a general matter, “a party may not seek a second trial on the basis of a theory not urged at 

the first trial”); see also Gill as Next Friend of K.C.R. v. Judd, 941 F.3d 504, 528 (11th Cir. 

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III

Because Gerald Harris didn’t have a medical condition that both was caused 

by cigarette addiction and manifested on or before November 21, 1996, he wasn’t

an Engle class member. Because he wasn’t an Engle class member, Mrs. Harris 

wasn’t entitled to the preclusive effect of the Phase I jury’s findings. And without 

those findings, she failed to prove essential elements of her claims. Accordingly, 

we REVERSE the district court’s denial of the defendants’ motion for judgment in 

accordance with the verdict. 

2019) (rejecting the notion that “a plaintiff can proceed on one theory of the case throughout the 

trial and then be entitled to a do-over under a different theory”).

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