Opinion ID: 2959641
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Impact of Howe I: Forfeiture

Text: We next consider whether Akron’s failure to challenge in Howe I the legal sufficiency of the evidence of adverse impact, the jury instructions, and the district court’s conclusion that the jury verdict was not against the manifest weight of the evidence precludes Akron from making those arguments now. In general, “question[s] that could have been but [were] not raised on one Nos. 13-4172/13-4268/14-3352 Howe, et al. v. City of Akron Page 28 appeal cannot be resurrected on a later appeal to the same court in the same case.” WRIGHT ET AL., supra § 4478.6. “Part of the price paid for the final-judgment rule is that trialcourt proceedings may be tainted by an unappealable ruling and require expensive and timeconsuming reconstruction after the opportunity for appeal finally becomes available. There is no reason to pay this price when there was an opportunity for review in the course of an appeal that was actually taken.” Id. The Plaintiffs refer to this as a “waiver,” some courts have referred to this principle as the “law of the case,”6 and others use the term “res judicata.”7 The Sixth Circuit has not defined the proper terminology to use in this situation or when it applies, and so we endeavor to define the appropriate terms and boundaries now. Res judicata bars relitigation of final judgments. Under federal common law,8 [r]es judicata has four elements: (1) a final decision on the merits by a court of competent jurisdiction; (2) a subsequent action between the same parties or their privies; (3) an issue in the subsequent action which was litigated or which should have been litigated in the prior action; and (4) an identity of the causes of action. 6 The Second Circuit has referred to the practice of refusing to consider an issue that could have been raised during the first appeal of a judgment as both “law of the case” and “waiver” in the context of successive criminal appeals: The law of the case ordinarily forecloses relitigation of issues expressly or impliedly decided by the appellate court. And where an issue was ripe for review at the time of an initial appeal but was nonetheless foregone, it is considered waived and the law of the case doctrine bars the district court on remand and an appellate court in a subsequent appeal from reopening such issues unless the mandate can reasonably be understood as permitting it to do so . . . . For similar reasons, . . . the law of the case ordinarily prohibits a party, upon resentencing or an appeal from that resentencing, from raising issues that he or she waived by not litigating them at the time of the initial sentencing. United States v. Quintieri, 306 F.3d 1217, 1229 (2d Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks, citations, and footnote omitted). In the civil context, the Seventh Circuit held that a plaintiff’s failure to appeal an entry of summary judgment during an earlier appeal prevented a challenge to the adverse summary-judgment order on a subsequent appeal. Fed’n of Adver. Indus. Representatives, Inc. v. City of Chi., 326 F.3d 924, 929 (7th Cir. 2003). 7 For example, in United States v. Gov’t of Virgin Islands, 363 F.3d 276, 292 (3d Cir. 2004), the Third Circuit invoked the principles of issue preclusion and res judicata to hold that the defendant’s failure to appeal an order to deposit funds “barr[ed] its challenge to the deposit requirement.” 8 Federal common law governs whether the Howe I appeal precludes Akron’s claims that the liability judgments are defective because those judgments involve federal questions and federal judgments. See Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 891 (2008) (“For judgments in federal-question cases—for example, Herrick’s FOIA suit— federal courts participate in developing uniform federal rules of res judicata, which this Court has ultimate authority to determine and declare.” (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted)). Nos. 13-4172/13-4268/14-3352 Howe, et al. v. City of Akron Page 29 Rawe v. Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 462 F.3d 521, 528 (6th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Howe I did not involve an appeal of a final judgment, however. Because the liability judgment was not “final,” res judicata does not bar appellate review of the liability judgments now. Nevertheless, Akron had the opportunity to litigate fully the merits of the liability judgment. Most courts apply a waiver/forfeiture principle to situations like the one presented in this case. In JGR, Inc. v. Thomasville Furniture Industries, Inc., 550 F.3d 529, 533 (6th Cir. 2008), we held that a plaintiff who did not challenge during their first appeal the jury’s finding that the plaintiffs had suffered no lost profits had “waived any right to relitigate the issue in the retrial for damages.” Our sibling circuits have used a similar approach. For example, in Lindquist v. City of Pasadena, 669 F.3d 225, 238 (5th Cir. 2012), in the plaintiffs’ first appeal, they argued that the statute at issue was facially unconstitutional, which the Fifth Circuit rejected before remanding the case to the district court. After the remand, the plaintiffs argued to the district court that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to them. Id. When the plaintiffs appealed again, the Fifth Circuit clarified that their as-applied challenge was not barred from appellate review because of the law-of-the-case doctrine; the first panel had addressed only the facial challenge, and not the as-applied challenge to the statute. See id. at 239. Instead, applying “waiver doctrine,” the Fifth Circuit held that the plaintiffs could not pursue their as-applied challenge because they could have raised that argument during the first appeal but had “waived” their as-applied challenge to the statute. Id. at 240. “Only plain error justifies departure from the waiver doctrine” in the Fifth Circuit. Med. Ctr. Pharmacy v. Holder, 634 F.3d 830, 836 (5th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Zahursky, 668 F.3d 456, 459 (7th Cir. 2012) (“By failing to raise the issue in his first appeal, Zahursky forfeited his right to challenge the application of the pseudo-count enhancement under § 2G1.3(d), and the district court was not obligated to consider this new argument on remand.”). But see Beazer E., Inc. v. Mead Corp., 525 F.3d 255, 263 (3d Cir. 2008) (“Mead cannot now, after a remand on an unrelated issue, raise objections that it previously waived,” unless “when an intervening decision from a superior court changes the controlling law.”). Nos. 13-4172/13-4268/14-3352 Howe, et al. v. City of Akron Page 30 We believe, however, that “waiver” is an inappropriate term to use to describe the failure to litigate an issue during a prior appeal. The terms “waiver” and “forfeiture” are often misused. See WRIGHT ET AL., supra § 4478.6. In most cases, the decision not to press an argument is the result of “an unreflected failure to think about the procedural need to make a choice (forfeiture),” rather than “a conscious choice to abandon a position (waiver).” Id. Therefore, we hold that a party who attempts to raise in a second appeal an issue, which could have been raised and fully litigated in the first appeal, has forfeited the issue. We will review a new issue in a second appeal only if the party seeking review demonstrates that the error was plain. Med. Ctr. Pharmacy, 634 F.3d at 836 (holding that the waiver rule prevents consideration of an issue raised in a second appeal absent plain error). Akron has forfeited any arguments that the liability judgment is flawed that it did not raise in Howe I to challenge the Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits. Therefore, absent plain error, we will not review Akron’s challenges to the sufficiency of adverse impact, the jury instruction about the four-fifths rule, and the district court’s denial of the motion for a new trial. Akron could have—and should have—raised each of these arguments to support its assertion that the order promoting the Plaintiffs was an abuse of discretion. Had Akron asserted that these errors undermined the liability judgment, then we could have taken those arguments into consideration in Howe I. Akron chose to challenge other aspects of the liability judgment instead. We do not believe that any of the errors that Akron asserts now were plain, and therefore we affirm the liability judgments. Akron presented evidence that, under 29 C.F.R. § 1607.4(D), Akron’s promotional process had a disparate impact on protected groups. Akron challenged the reliability of the four-fifths rule and offered testimony that other statistical tests showed that Akron’s promotional process did not disparately impact protected groups. The jury listened to testimony about the strengths and weaknesses of the four-fifths rule, and concluded that, in this case, the Plaintiffs had demonstrated that the promotional process had a discriminatory effect. The Supreme Court has never said what kind of statistical evidence courts may rely on to find adverse impact. Isabel v. City of Memphis, 404 F.3d 404, 412 (6th Cir. 2005). Indeed, in Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. 557, 586 (2009), the Supreme Court indicated that a violation of the Nos. 13-4172/13-4268/14-3352 Howe, et al. v. City of Akron Page 31 four-fifths rule was prima facie evidence of disparate-impact liability, citing 29 C.F.R. § 1607.4(D). And we have used the four-fifths rule as the starting point to determine whether plaintiffs alleging disparate impact have met their prima facie burden, although we have used other statistical tests as well. See Isabel, 404 F.3d at 410. Accordingly, without more guidance from the Supreme Court, we are loath to overturn the jury’s conclusion that the Plaintiffs’ proof of disparate impact was persuasive.