Opinion ID: 766480
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Municipal Defendants' Liability.

Text: 33 Barrett also argues that the district court erred in finding as a matter of law that the liability of the municipal defendants was contingent upon the liability of the individual defendants. As we have noted, the verdict form instructed the jury to cease deliberations if it found the individual defendants not liable, and the district court repeated this instruction orally over Barrett's objection after receiving a request from the jury for clarification. 34 As a preliminary matter, the defendants urge us not to consider Barrett's objection to the verdict form regardless of its potential merit. They argue that Barrett's lawyers forfeited any objections to the verdict form that were not made before the jury began deliberating. The defendants assert that the objection was not timely because Barrett's counsel objected only when the jury asked for clarifying instructions, and that the merits of the objection therefore should not be considered. We do not agree. 35 It is true that failure to challenge the omission of an issue from a Rule 49(a) verdict form before the jury retires to deliberate constitutes a waiver of the right to a trial by jury on that issue. Bradway v. Gonzales, 26 F.3d 313, 317 (2d Cir. 1994). In this case, however, the alleged error was not the omission of an issue from the verdict form, which did contain questions as to the liability of the municipal defendants. Rather, Barrett's appeal focuses on the instruction provided on the verdict form, later repeated by Judge Casey, ordering the jurors not to reach the question of municipal liability if they found the individual defendants not liable. Because the subject of Barrett's complaint was an instruction, not the omission of a question, we treat his challenge as an objection to a jury instruction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 51. 36 An objection under Rule 51 usually must be made before the jury retires to consider its verdict. Fed. R. Civ. P. 51. Barrett's counsel did not comply with this mandate. We nonetheless think the objection was timely because of counsel's objection at the time of Judge Casey's review of the jury's question, Judge Casey's ruling on Barrett's objection, and the judge's issuance of the clarifying instruction. Objections to the instructions under Rule 51 [of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure] made after the jury has begun deliberating . . . will not be considered on appeal.... If, however, the jury later is given additional instructions or the instructions are reread... an objection may be made at that time and it is the court's duty to correct the error. 9A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT &AMP; ARTHUR R. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE 2553, at 415-17 (2d Ed. 1995). But cf. Parker v. City of Nashua, 76 F.3d 9, 13 (1st Cir. 1996) ([F]ew cases address what happens when the jury is simply given the original instruction again and the lawyer. . . makes an objection . . . that was not properly presented before.). 37 The purpose of Rule 51's timeliness requirement is to prevent unnecessary new trials because of errors the judge might have corrected if they had been brought to his attention at the proper time. Bonner v. Guccione, 178 F.3d 581, 586 (2d Cir. 1999) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In the present case, Judge Casey was provided with sufficient opportunity to correct the potential error before the jury was discharged. The jury instructions on the verdict form could have been modified after Barrett's counsel objected to them and before clarifying instructions were issued. We therefore do not think Rule 51 bars our consideration of an objection to a jury instruction that gave the trial judge an opportunity to correct that instruction, and we address the substance of Barrett's claim. 38 Barrett argues that under the Supreme Court's decision in Monell a municipality may be found liable for constitutional violations under 42 U.S.C. 1983 even if no named individual defendants are found to be liable. He asserts that it was therefore error for the district court to remove the question of municipal liability from the jury once the jury determined that Lee and Colonna were not liable. We agree. 39 Other circuits have recognized that a municipality may be found liable under 1983 even in the absence of individual liability. See Anderson v. City of Atlanta, 778 F.2d 678, 686 (11th Cir. 1985) (Monell... and its progeny do not require that a jury must first find an individual defendant liable before imposing liability on local government); Garcia v. Salt Lake County, 768 F.2d 303, 310 (10th Cir. 1985)(Monell does not require that a jury find an individual defendant liable before it can find a local governmental body liable.). These courts conclude that even in situations where the acts or omissions of individual employees do not violate an individual's constitutional rights, the combined acts or omissions of several employees acting under a governmental policy or custom may violate those rights. Id. Thus in Garcia, for example, the Tenth Circuit rejected the argument that a jury's finding that ten county employees were not liable for a plaintiff's death was irreconcilable with its finding that the county itself was liable. See id. 40 We agree with our sister circuits that under Monell municipal liability for constitutional injuries may be found to exist even in the absence of individual liability, at least so long as the injuries complained of are not solely attributable to the actions of named individual defendants. Cf. City of Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 796, 798-99 (1986) (per curiam) (where alleged constitutional injury is caused solely by named individual defendant who is found not liable, municipal liability cannot lie). It is therefore possible that a jury could find the Commission and the County of Orange liable for the alleged violations of Barrett's First Amendment rights even after finding that Lee and Colonna are not liable. Lee and Colonna may have been the most prominent figures in Barrett's termination; they may have issued plaintiff's termination letter. But the Commission is a multi-member body that makes its determinations as a group, and many of the adverse employment actions complained of by Barrett, including the decision to terminate him as Executive Director of the Commission, were taken by the Commission as a whole, not by Lee and Colonna by themselves. It is therefore possible that the defendant commissioners did not as individuals violate Barrett's rights, but that the Commission did. Cf. Jeffries v. Harleston, 52 F.3d 9, 14 (2d Cir. 1995) (where fourteen members of Board of Trustees voted to terminate plaintiff, and only six acted with discriminatory motive, no constitutional violation because majority of Board acted with permissible motive). 41 For these reasons we conclude that it was error for the district court to prevent the jury from deciding the issue of municipal liability simply because Lee and Colonna were found not to be liable. We vacate the district court's judgment as it relates to Barrett's claims against the municipal defendants and remand the case to the district court for retrial on those claims.