Opinion ID: 1207872
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Juries and Equity

Text: In 1687, King James, II came to despair of achieving his dream of restoring the Roman Catholic faith to England because an act of Parliament banned from public office anyone except a practicing communicant of the Church of England, thus barring Roman Catholics and dissenting Protestants from royal preferment. Without the ability to place Roman Catholics in high office and then to bestow Crown benefits upon them, James could not assure a Catholic successor because, given James' age, a successful Catholic Regency would need to be put in place for any possible male heir. [20] James, therefore, without the consent of Parliament, issued an Edict of Indulgence lifting for both Roman Catholics and dissenting Protestants the ban on holding office imposed by statute. In the spring of 1688, James resolved that he would require all priests throughout his realm (with a view to giving the Edict of Indulgence greater legitimacy) to read the Edict of Indulgence from the pulpit and, in furtherance of that design, he ordered all bishops to require such reading by their inferior clergy. The hierarchy of the Church of England, the Lords Temporal, and the overwhelming majority of citizenseven dissenting Protestantswere outraged! And so, in May of 1688, seven prominent bishops in the South of Englandthe Archbishop, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chinchester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristolgathered and agreed that they would not comply with the King's order and, in explanation, prepared and personally delivered to the King a petition setting forth their grievance that the King was acting ultra vires. Parliament had, indeed, both in the late reign of Charles II and in the present reign, pronounced that the sovereign was not constitutionally competent to dispense with statutes in matters ecclesiastical. The Edict of Indulgence was, therefore, illegal. The King became incensed, and ultimately caused a criminal information to be brought against the bishops for seditious libel. To the consternation of the populous, the bishops were imprisoned in the Tower of London pending trial and, in due course, were brought before a petit jury presided over by sycophants of the Crown. During that trial, the Crown presented overwhelming evidence that the bishops published a seditious libel (as the law then defined seditious libel) in the County of Middlesex on the day charged. Although the Crown was essentially entitled to a directed verdict, the jury nonetheless acquitted. The whole prosecution was preposterous! Thus, we have what is perhaps the leading (but not the earliest) instance in Anglo-American law of jury nullificationa valuable prerogative that intrudes itself into the rational court mechanism when, notwithstanding technical legal rules, the application of those rules to the facts at hand would be an utter outrage and such that all mankind should exclaim against it at first blush. [21] In our modern law the standard for granting summary judgment has been well set for quite a while. We recently summarized the law in syllabus points 1 through 4 of Painter v. Peavy, 192 W.Va. 189, 451 S.E.2d 755 (1994): 1. A circuit court's entry of summary judgment is reviewed de novo. 2. `A motion for summary judgment should be granted only when it is clear that there is no genuine issue of fact to be tried and inquiry concerning the facts is not desirable to clarify the application of the law.' Syllabus Point 3, Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Federal Insurance Co. of New York, 148 W.Va. 160, 133 S.E.2d 770 (1963). Syllabus Point 1, Andrick v. Town of Buckhannon, 187 W.Va. 706, 421 S.E.2d 247 (1992). 3. The circuit court's function at the summary judgment stage is not to weigh the evidence and determine the truth of the matter, but is to determine whether there is a genuine issue for trial. 4. Summary judgment is appropriate where the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, such as where the nonmoving party has failed to make a sufficient showing on an essential element of the case that it has the burden to prove. The State, then, argues that any investment whose profit potential (and exposure to loss) derives from attempts accurately to predict future market fluctuations is necessarily speculative because no one can consistently and accurately predict the market. We believe the issue of whether the trial court was correct in entering summary judgment is very close, but subjecting Morgan Stanley to a roughly $52 million judgment without benefit of jury review seems inappropriate for reasons that are perhaps at odds with a mechanistic approach to law but, nonetheless, comport with overall equity. As Dean Pound once said: Jury lawlessness is the great corrective of law in its actual administration. [22] And, although jury nullification is out of favor as an explicit jury function in modern times, it is still worth savoring Mr. Justice Jay's charge to the jury in the civil case of Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. 1, 3 Dall. 1, 4, 1 L.Ed. 483, 484 (1794): It may not be amiss, here, Gentlemen, to remind you of the good old rule, that on questions of fact, it is the province of the jury, on questions of law, it is the province of the court to decide. But it must be observed that by the same law, which recognizes this reasonable distribution of jurisdiction, you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy. On this, and on every other occasion, however, we have no doubt, you will pay that respect, which is due to the opinion of the court: For, as on the one hand, it is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumable, that the court are the best judges of law. But still both objects are lawfully, within your power of decision. [Emphasis added.] Mr. Justice Jay's jury instruction would not be given today in federal court, yet even in federal court there remains an abiding respect for the power of the jury to nullify oppressive law, even if there is no express right on the part of the jury to do so. See, e.g., Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 15 S.Ct. 273, 39 L.Ed. 343 (1895); United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113 (1972); United States v. Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002 (1969); United States v. Spock, 416 F.2d 165 (1969). Although we recognize that Rule 50, WVRCP would seem to be at odds with a defendant's right to have a jury pass on the total justice of a civil cause unless there are disputed questions of fact, in a case such as the one before us where the judgment is not for unjust enrichment or gains made by Morgan Stanley, but is more in the nature of a fine or an effort to shift the loss among equally guilty parties, the defendants certainly meet the standard of Syl. pt. 2 of Painter v. Peavy, supra , that inquiry into the facts will clarify the application of the law. [23]