Opinion ID: 705082
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-Judgment Dismissal of Common Law Claims: Effect on

Text: Damages Award 45 As part of its further questioning of the damages awards, Steinberg insists it was error to sustain any part of the jury's awards of compensatory and punitive damages that were based upon the estate's dismissed common law claims. 46 Defendant contends that when the district court set aside plaintiff's claims for conversion, negligence, and gross negligence as time-barred, it was required as a matter of law to vacate the jury's common law damages award of $250,000. He reasons the jury returned a lump sum award predicated upon all five of the estate's common law claims and it is impossible to determine which part of the jury's award, if any, is attributable to the dismissed claims and which part to the surviving claims. Thus, Steinberg concludes there is no way to know whether or not the invalid claim was the sole basis for the verdict. See United New York and New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Ass'n v. Halecki, 358 U.S. 613, 619, 79 S.Ct. 517, 520, 3 L.Ed.2d 541 (1959); see also Morrissey v. National Maritime Union of Am., 544 F.2d 19, 26 (2d Cir.1976) (The general rule is that when one of the two claims that have been submitted to the jury should not have been submitted, a general verdict ... cannot stand.). 47 This conclusion misses the mark. The jury did not return a general verdict, leaving the court uncertain as to liability on plaintiff's other claims. Rather, its special verdict found defendants liable on each common law claim. Plaintiff is entitled to recover its full measure of compensatory damages, despite the dismissal of certain common law claims, because each claim presented an alternative theory of liability based upon the same set of facts, the same series of acts, and the same injuries caused by the same actors. Whether or not a defendant is liable to a plaintiff under one or many theories of liability does not affect the damages award because the amount of compensatory damages awarded is not dependent on the number of theories that plaintiff alleges and under which it may recover. Rather, the amount of damages depends on the extent of the injury suffered. See Clark v. Taylor, 710 F.2d 4, 8 (1st Cir.1983).