Opinion ID: 657374
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Verdict Resubmission.

Text: 26 Neimi desired a special verdict, so he submitted a special verdict form, which the district court accepted. Unfortunately, the special verdict form contained an ambiguity. It first asked if Neimi had violated Larson's rights; it next asked if Neimi was entitled to qualified immunity; it then went on to ask the jury to determine damages. The jury, at first, answered the first two questions in the affirmative. It then fixed damages at $26,612. When that form was returned by the jury, everyone--the court and both parties--recognized that there was an inconsistency in the verdict because if there were immunity, the jury did not need to (and could not) go forward and assess damages. The difficulty arose because the jury was not told that. The form had the usual stop here, if your answer is no direction after the first question. It did not have a similar direction after the second one. Obviously, the jury's answers could have meant that it erred in checking the yes box for the second question, or they could have meant that the jury thought it was to calculate the damages even if there were immunity. Fortunately the jury had not been discharged, so the trial judge was able to resubmit the form to it and thus attempt to provide both fairness and efficiency. Mateyko, 924 F.2d at 827. 27 Before the form was resubmitted to the jury, the district judge held a conference with the parties. Both agreed that the form should be resubmitted and neither offered any objection to the way in which it was done. 28 The jury retired to review its verdict. When it returned, it had changed the answer to the second question to no. That rendered the verdict consistent, though not to Neimi's liking. 29 Given the fact that Neimi submitted the defective form in the first place and given the fact that he agreed to resubmission, the error, if any, at least borders on an error invited by Neimi himself. See United States v. Baldwin, 987 F.2d 1432, 1436-37 (9th Cir.) (where defendant himself proposed the challenged jury instruction, that was invited error and review was denied), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 113 S.Ct. 2948, 124 L.Ed.2d 696 (1993); United States v. Guthrie, 931 F.2d 564, 567 (9th Cir.1991) (same). Certainly, we would be hard-pressed to determine that the district court abused its discretion when it denied a motion for a new trial based upon this ground. 30 In any event, Neimi's tardy complaints about the resubmission of the verdict form are ill-founded. He makes much of a Fourth Circuit case, where the court disapproved of the resubmission of a form in which a jury first indicated no liability and then awarded damages. McCollum v. Stahl, 579 F.2d 869, 870-71 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 912, 99 S.Ct. 1225, 59 L.Ed.2d 460 (1979). The court also held that, as a matter of law, special verdict forms cannot be resubmitted. Id. However, in Mateyko, we rejected the Fourth Circuit's analysis and went on to hold that: 31 If the inconsistency between special verdict answers is noticed prior to the dismissal of the jury, the district court has the discretion to resubmit the issue to the jury with a request for clarification. Though [Federal Rule of Civil Procedure] 49(a) does not explicitly provide for resubmitting inconsistent special verdict answers, neither does the rule prohibit it. Permitting the trial court in its discretion to resubmit inconsistent answers for clarification promotes both fairness and efficiency. 32