Opinion ID: 2764472
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Rejected Jury Instruction

Text: We review the district court’s refusal to give a proposed jury instruction for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Langston, 590 F.3d 1226, 1235 (11th Cir. 2009); Broaddus v. Fla. Power Corp., 145 F.3d 1283, 1288 (11th Cir. 1998). Our role “in reviewing a trial court’s jury instructions [] is to assure that the instructions show no tendency to confuse or mislead the jury with respect to the applicable principles of law.” S.E.C. v. Yun, 327 F.3d 1263, 1281 (11th Cir. 2003) (internal 5 Although the district court denied the lieutenants’ motion for judgment as a matter of law on different grounds, we may affirm a district court’s decision to grant or deny a motion for any reason supported by the record. Am. United Life Ins. Co. v. Martinez, 480 F.3d 1043, 1059 (11th Cir. 2007) (citation omitted). 18 Case: 13-11718 Date Filed: 12/24/2014 Page: 19 of 27 quotation marks and citation omitted). “We will not disturb a jury’s verdict unless the charge, taken as a whole, is erroneous and prejudicial.” Id.
The MFD lieutenants contend that the district court erred by refusing to give the following requested jury instruction relating to how a firefighter’s “wait time” should be characterized: The time a Fire Suppression Lieutenant spends waiting to respond to calls, engaging in physical training, eating, and sleeping assumes the character of the work they perform once dispatched to an emergency scene. The lieutenants argue that the requested jury instruction would have assisted the jury in its determination of the “primary duty” of the employees in this case—the second prong of the test required for an employer to establish the executive exemption. The district court rejected the proposed jury instruction and instead instructed the jury as follows on the “primary duty” prong: The Department of Labor regulations define “primary duty” as the principal, main, major, or most important duty that the employee performs. Determination of an employee’s primary duty must be based on all the facts in a particular case, with the major emphasis on the character of the employee’s job as a whole. Factors to consider when determining the primary duty of an employee include, but are not limited to, the relative importance of the exempt duties as compared with other types of duties; the amount of time spent performing exempt work; the employee’s relative freedom from 19 Case: 13-11718 Date Filed: 12/24/2014 Page: 20 of 27 direct supervision; and the relationship between the employee’s salary and the wages paid to other employees for the kind of nonexempt work performed by the employee. This instruction tracks 29 C.F.R. § 541.700(a), the DOL regulation that defines “primary duty.” The district court further explained, The amount of time spent performing exempt work can be a useful guide in determining whether exempt work is the primary duty of an employee. Thus, employees who spend more than 50 percent of their time performing exempt work will generally satisfy the primary duty requirement. Time alone, however, is not the sole test, and nothing in the regulations requires that exempt employees spend more than 50 percent of their time performing exempt work. Employees who do not spend more than 50 percent of their time performing exempt duties may nonetheless meet the primary duty requirement if the other factors support such a conclusion. This instruction is a verbatim recitation of 29 C.F.R. § 541.700(b), the DOL regulation providing additional guidance on how to determine what constitutes a “primary duty.” Additionally, because the parties disputed the character of the work performed by the lieutenants once dispatched to an emergency scene, 6 the district 6 The MFD lieutenants contended that their primary duty while on the scene of an emergency was to control the fire, while the City argued that their primary duty was the executive work associated with command and control of the fire scene. 20 Case: 13-11718 Date Filed: 12/24/2014 Page: 21 of 27 court also instructed the jury on the concurrent performance of exempt and nonexempt work: Concurrent performance of exempt and nonexempt work does not disqualify an employee from the executive exemption if the requirements for the exemption are otherwise met. While an employee meets the definition of a bona fide executive employee when the employee performs concurrent duties is determined on a case-bycase basis and is based on the factors set forth in the Department of Labor’s definition of “primary duty.” Generally, exempt executives make the decision about when to perform nonexempt duties. Exempt executives also generally remain responsible for the success or failure of business operations under their management while performing the nonexempt work. In contrast, the nonexempt employee generally is directed by a supervisor to perform the exempt work or performs the exempt work for defined time periods. An employee whose primary duty is ordinarily—is ordinary production work or routine, recurrent, or repetitive tasks cannot qualify for exemption as an executive. Like the primary-duty instruction, the concurrent-performance instruction also tracks the applicable DOL regulation—29 C.F.R. § 541.106. Finally, the district court explained to the jury that the parties disagreed on whether the lieutenants’ primary duty was the “prevention, control, or extinguishment of fires and the rescue of fire victims,” on the one hand, or management, on the other.7 7 The district court also instructed the jury that, in August 2004, the DOL promulgated a regulation commonly referred to as the “first-responder regulation,” and the court read the text of the first-responder regulation to the jurors. The district court advised the jury that the first21 Case: 13-11718 Date Filed: 12/24/2014 Page: 22 of 27
A district court abuses its discretion by refusing to give a requested instruction “only when (1) the requested instruction correctly stated the law, (2) the instruction dealt with an issue properly before the jury, and (3) the failure to give the instruction resulted in prejudicial harm to the requesting party.’” Pensacola Motor Sales, Inc. v. E. Shore Toyota, LLC, 684 F.3d 1211, 1224 (11th Cir. 2012) (quoting Burchfield v. CSX Transp., Inc., 636 F.3d 1330, 1333-34 (11th Cir. 2011)