Opinion ID: 2981417
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: impact of jury verdict on remand

Text: Because we have reinstated some of Static Control’s counterclaims, Static Control requests that we instruct the district court on remand to treat retroactively the advisory jury’s findings that Lexmark misused its patents as binding jury findings. Lexmark unsurprisingly objects to this. The Seventh Amendment provides that “no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States.” U.S. CONST. amend. VII. Static Control claims that presenting the reinstated antitrust claims now to a binding jury would violate this prohibition because these issues were already presented once to a jury, albeit an advisory one. Because those claims must be decided by a jury if reinstated, Static Control suggests that the only remedy to this problem is retroactively to call the advisory jury’s findings of fact binding, as opposed to proceeding with a new trial before a new, binding jury.12 The differences between the defense of patent misuse and affirmative state-law antitrust claims or a Lanham Act claim notwithstanding, we decline to deem an advisory jury’s findings binding retroactively. See Hildebrand v. Bd. of Trs. of Mich. State Univ., 607 F.2d 705, 710 (6th Cir. 1979) (“To convert a trial from a jury trial to a bench trial (or vice-versa) in the middle of the proceedings is to interfere with counsel’s presentation of their case and, quite possibly, to prejudice one side or the other.”); Fischer Imaging Corp. v. Gen. Elec. Co., 187 F.3d 1165, 1174 (10th Cir. 1999) (rejecting argument by claimant that advisory jury’s verdict should retroactively become binding); Pradier v. Elespuru, 641 F.2d 808, 811 (9th Cir. 1981) (noting significant tactical differences in litigating before an advisory jury). Although here the tactical differences are minimal given that the change to an advisory jury occurred when the district court gave the final jury instructions, we decline to speculate as to whether the change in the jury’s instruction altered the jury’s analysis of the issue Static Control now 12 Static Control is right that if a district court erroneously dismisses a legal claim otherwise entitled to a jury determination, any subsequent findings of fact by the judge must be vacated and the claim relitigated before a jury. Lytle v. Household Mfg., Inc., 494 U.S. 545, 552-53 (1990). That procedural posture, however, is not present in this case. Nonetheless, when a party has the right to a jury determination on an issue under the Seventh Amendment, there is ample precedent that an advisory jury does not satisfy that requirement. See Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 337 n. 24 (1979) (“[A]n advisory jury . . . would not in any event have been a Seventh Amendment jury.”). Nos. 09-6287/6288/6449 Static Control v. Lexmark Int’l Page 31 seeks to treat as binding. Cf. Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1994) (holding that court may not “mislead the jury as to its role in the sentencing process in a way that allows the jury to feel less responsible than it should for the sentencing decision.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore decline Static Control’s request.