Opinion ID: 774368
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Feltner's Motion to Preclude a Jury Trial on Statutory Damages

Text: 13 Feltner also asserts that the district court erred in denying his motion in limine to preclude a jury trial on the issue of statutory damages. Here, Feltner argues that in holding that the statutory damages provision of the Copyright Act violates the Seventh Amendment, the Supreme Court effectively found that the statutory damages provision of the Copyright Act is unconstitutional in its entirety. Feltner thus urges us to find that the Supreme Court's decision in this case rendered the statutory damages provision of the Copyright Act constitutionally unenforceable. 14 This argument is not persuasive. What the Supreme Court held is that to the extent §§ 504(c) fails to provide a jury trial right, it violates the Seventh Amendment and is therefore unconstitutional. However, this holding in no way implies that copyright plaintiffs are no longer able to seek statutory damages under the Copyright Act. Indeed, the position urged by Feltner is contrary to the express language of the Supreme Court's decision in this case. As the Feltner Court stated, if a party so demands, a jury must determine the actual amount of statutory damages under §§ 504(c) . . . .  Feltner, 523 U.S. at 355. The Court later reaffirmed this point by stating, the Seventh Amendment provides a right to a jury trial on all issues pertaining to an award of statutory damages under §§ 504(c) of the Copyright Act, including the amount itself. Id. This language evinces the Court's intent to preserve a plaintiff's ability to seek statutory damages under§§ 504(c) of the Copyright Act. 15 Feltner argues that this interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision amounts to an impermissible rewriting of §§ 504(c). According to Feltner, if the Court finds that §§ 504(c) is constitutionally infirm because it fails to provide for a jury trial, then the Court must strike down §§ 504(c) in its entirety and wait for Congress to re-enact §§ 504(c) with a jury trial provision included. This argument fails to understand the Supreme Court's holding in this case. In Feltner , the Supreme Court held that §§ 504(c) provides a remedy for copyright infringement, and the Seventh Amendment provides a right to a jury trial when that remedy is at issue. This holding is consistent with the Supreme Court's interpretation of other federal statutes that provide a remedy but similarly fail to provide for a jury trial. See, e.g., Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412 (1987) (regarding civil penalties under the Clean Water Act); Curtis v. Loether, 415 U.S. 189 (1974) (holding that although it is not clear whether Section 812 of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 provides for a jury trial, a jury trial is provided by the Seventh Amendment). 16 This interpretation is also consistent with Nimmer's reading of the Supreme Court's decision in Feltner . According to Nimmer: 17 Eight justices of the Supreme Court have now determined that Congress did not allow for juries to be appointed under Section 504(a), which is therefore unconstitutional; one might therefore conclude that an award of statutory damages cannot ever be invoked against a defendant who demands her right to a jury trial . . . . But in the topsy-turvy world of the Seventh Amendment, a finding that a statute is unconstitutional typically does not render it inoperative. Whenever the Supreme Court has determined that the particular statute under examination does not accord the right to a jury but the Seventh Amendment so requires in that type of case, the same pattern recurs: Notwithstanding that the Court holds the enactment of Congress unconstitutional, the statute itself goes on functioning. 18 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright, §§ 14.04[C][2] (2000) (emphasis added). 19 Finally, we note that since the Supreme Court's ruling in Feltner, various courts have conducted jury trials on the issue of statutory damages. See, e.g., Yurman Design, Inc. v. PAJ, Inc., 93 F. Supp. 2d 449, 462 n.5 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (stating that [I]t is worth noting that the question of statutory damages was put to the jury, rather than decided by the Court, given the Supreme Court's decision in Feltner . . . .); Segrets, Inc. v . Gillman Knitwear, Co., 207 F.3d 56, 62-65 (1st Cir. 2000) (remanding for a jury trial following Supreme Court's ruling in Feltner). 20 Therefore, we find that the Supreme Court's decision in Feltner did not eliminate §§ 504(c) of the Copyright Act, and we affirm the district court's denial of Feltner's motion to preclude a jury trial on statutory damages. 21