Opinion ID: 777646
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Proximate Cause Instruction

Text: 20 Appellants also argue that the proximate cause instruction given by the district court constitutes plain error, insisting that proximate cause is irrelevant under the doctrine of command responsibility. For support, they note that no international case has ever required such a showing for liability and that the Ninth Circuit has specifically rejected the argument that proximate cause is a required element of the doctrine. See Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F.3d 767, 774 (9th Cir.1996). 21 It is a cardinal rule of appellate review that a party may not challenge as error a ruling or other trial proceeding invited by that party. United States v. Ross, 131 F.3d 970, 988 (11th Cir.1997) (quoting Crockett v. Uniroyal, Inc., 772 F.2d 1524, 1530 n. 4 (11th Cir.1985)). Where invited error exists, it precludes a court from invoking the plain error rule and reversing. United States v. Davis, 443 F.2d 560, 564-65 (5th Cir.1971). 10 This court has held that where a party, rather than just remaining silent and not objecting to a proposed jury instruction, responds to the court's proposal with the words the instruction is acceptable to us, this constitutes invited error. United States v. Fulford, 267 F.3d 1241, 1247 (11th Cir.2001). In Fulford, we decided that these words served to waive a party's right to challenge the accepted instruction on appeal. See id. 22 In this case, the record reveals that Appellants responded to the district court's proposed jury instructions with its own changes to the proximate cause section. 11 Where, as here, the instruction eventually given to the jury reflected changes that Appellants themselves proposed and to which they did not later object, we may find under Fulford that they have waived any assertion of error on appeal. Furthermore, at one point during a discussion between the district court and counsel, the court recited its understanding of the proximate cause requirement to which Appellants' counsel responded in agreement. 12 23 Accordingly, whatever light international law might shed on proximate cause as it pertains to the command responsibility doctrine, we have no trouble concluding that the challenged instruction constituted invited error and decline to review for reversible error.