Opinion ID: 783131
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Allegedly inconsistent verdicts

Text: 37 At the heart of this appeal is the appellants' argument that the verdict returned by the jury is irreconcilably inconsistent. According to the appellants, three elements of the jury verdict are inconsistent: first, that the jury found the corporate defendants liable for discrimination but found Lees not liable; second, that the jury found the corporate defendants liable for discrimination under § 1981 but not under Washington law; and third, that on the breach of contract claim the jury awarded more in double damages than it had awarded in damages for the same claim. Although these alleged inconsistencies present several intersecting legal issues, we conclude that none of them is cause to vacate the judgment or to order a new trial.
38 As an initial matter, and one that is not inconsequential to the legal analysis of these claims, the parties disagree as to the nature of the verdicts at issue. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure explicitly contemplate two types of verdicts, special verdicts, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(a), and general verdicts with interrogatories, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(b), and implicitly contemplate common law general verdicts without interrogatories. Both special verdicts and interrogatories comprise only factual findings; a special verdict is in the form of a special written finding upon each issue of fact, Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(a), and interrogatories are returned upon one or more issues of fact the decision of which is necessary to a verdict, Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(b). 39 The Federal Rules do not define general verdicts, but they imply that general verdicts do not involve factual findings but rather ultimate legal conclusions. See id. This view is of course consistent with the common law and our own caselaw; in Floyd v. Laws, 929 F.2d 1390 (9th Cir. 1991), we held that the theoretical distinction between general and special verdicts is that general verdicts require the jury to apply the law to the facts, and therefore require legal instruction, whereas special verdicts compel the jury to focus exclusively on its fact-finding role. Id. at 1395. Black's defines a general verdict as [a] verdict whereby the jury find either for the plaintiff or for the defendant in general terms. Black's Law Dictionary 1560 (6th ed.1990). Thus in a general verdict the jury announces only the prevailing party on a particular claim, and may announce damages. 40 A jury may return multiple general verdicts as to each claim, and each party, in a lawsuit, without undermining the general nature of its verdicts. See, e.g., 9A Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure § 2504.1 (2d ed. Supp.2003) (In cases involving multiple claims ... or defendants, the district court may ... have the jury render multiple general verdicts.). Although some general verdicts are more general than others, encompassing multiple claims, the key is not the number of questions on the verdict form, but whether the jury announces the ultimate legal result of each claim. If the jury announces only its ultimate conclusions, it returns an ordinary general verdict; if it makes factual findings in addition to the ultimate legal conclusions, it returns a general verdict with interrogatories. If it returns only factual findings, leaving the court to determine the ultimate legal result, it returns a special verdict. 41 These terms are not adequate to capture every answer that a jury may give. In addition to the ultimate legal conclusion in a case, a jury may make legal conclusions as to subsidiary issues, such as affirmative defenses, or the amount of damages owed, which are neither findings of fact nor quite verdicts. Such answers are similar in kind to general verdicts, because they require application of the law to the facts, but we have found no precise label for them. 42 In this case, the jury returned general verdicts, with separate determinations as to damages, for nearly every claim, making virtually no factual findings. Of the thirteen questions on the verdict form, eleven were either of the form Do you find for [the] plaintiff? or What total amount of [damages] [punitive damages] [lost wages] do you award? All of the discrimination claims were disposed of by such questions; therefore, each of the alleged inconsistencies in the discrimination claims arises between two general verdicts. 43 The only area in which the jury made factual findings relates to double damages. After finding that the defendants were liable for lost wages on Zhang's breach of contract claim, the jury was asked two questions: Do you find that any wages or benefits were willfully withheld with intent to deprive plaintiff of wages or benefits required by the contract? and What amount of wages or benefits were willfully withheld during the period from the date of termination until September 29, 1999? On this one issue the jury returned a special verdict, leaving to the trial court the duty to apply the law and determine that Zhang was entitled to double damages for all wages and benefits willfully withheld. With respect to double damages, therefore, the appellants allege an inconsistency between a subsidiary legal conclusion (the award of damages for breach of contract) and one of the factual findings in a special verdict (the amount of wages willfully withheld). 44
45 We contemplate three ways in which legal conclusions such as general verdicts might be alleged to be inconsistent: the jury might disregard instructions requiring two general verdicts to be harmonious; the jury might return a general verdict that, under the facts of the case, implies a lack of evidence underlying another general verdict; or the jury might return two general verdicts that, under any facts, seem to be legally irreconcilable. The latter two situations are presented here. In the split verdict between the corporate defendants and Lees on the § 1981 claim, the appellants claim that although it is legally possible for a corporation to be held liable for discrimination while its agent is exonerated (because, among other reasons, the corporation may have acted through other agents), in this case there was no evidence that anyone other than Lees committed any discriminatory acts, and thus the verdict fails for insufficient evidence. As to the discrepancy between the federal and state discrimination claims, the appellants argue that these claims are legally indistinguishable under any set of facts and thus that no rational jury could find liability on one and not the other claim.
46 The appellants' sufficiency of the evidence argument fails because it was not raised before the close of all the evidence. 5 The appellants made a post-verdict motion for JMOL based on insufficiency of the evidence, but failed to meet the ordinary requirement that a motion for JMOL must first be brought at the close of all the evidence. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(b); Janes, 279 F.3d at 887. 47 The appellants suggest that the ordinary waiver rules for JMOL do not apply here because the sufficiency of the evidence issue arose only due to the jury's split liability findings, relying upon Pierce v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 823 F.2d 1366 (9th Cir.1987). In Pierce, we held that where a jury had returned a special verdict, a challenge to the consistency of its answers could be raised in a post-verdict motion for JMOL even though no pre-verdict motion had been made. Id. at 1369. But Pierce was specifically limited to the context of a special verdict, and inapplicable to a case such as this in which the jury returned a general verdict: 48 [J]ust as a motion for directed verdict is not required to preserve the question whether a judgment is supported by the jury's special verdict, a motion for directed verdict need not be a condition precedent for JNOV when the challenge is to the consistency of answers under a Rule 49(a) special verdict, and not to the sufficiency of evidence supporting a general verdict. 49 Id. (emphasis added). 50 A close analysis of Pierce demonstrates that although our inquiry was styled as a review of the consistency of the special verdict answers, it really was indistinguishable from review of whether the special verdict answers supported the judgment of the trial court. The basic issue in Pierce was whether, under the facts of that case, a particular factual finding nullified the defendant's liability, regardless of any other factual findings that might suggest that the defendant was liable. See id. at 1370 (noting that the defendant's view was that one of the jury's findings negated its negligence as a matter of law). Thus the real question was whether the jury's factual findings required judgment for the plaintiff or the defendant, a question that is simply irrelevant where, as here, no factual findings are at issue. 51 The inapplicability of Pierce to general verdicts is demonstrated by subsequent Ninth Circuit caselaw. In Vaughan v. Ricketts, 950 F.2d 1464 (9th Cir.1991), we considered the internal consistency of a general verdict in which the jury determined that the defendants had violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights, but nonetheless found that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity. Id. at 1466. As in Pierce, the plaintiffs filed a post-verdict motion for JMOL and appealed its denial, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to support both the qualified immunity finding and the determination of liability. Id. at 1466, 1470. But in contrast to Pierce, the court held that where inconsistent verdicts are alleged, the test is not whether there was substantial evidence for the jury's conclusion, but whether it is possible to reconcile the verdicts. Id. at 1470. Because it was possible for a jury to find qualified immunity and a violation of constitutional rights, there was no need to determine whether the facts presented supported such a verdict. Id. Although Vaughan involved an alleged inconsistency between a general verdict and a subsidiary legal conclusion on an affirmative defense, it is similar to the instant case in that it involved discrepancies between two legal conclusions, rather than the adequacy of factual findings to support a judgment. 52 Thus, unless the alleged inconsistency involves the sufficiency of the jury's factual findings to support the ultimate legal conclusion, 6 the defendant must raise the issue prior to submission to the jury in order to preserve any objections to sufficiency of the evidence. We see two compelling rationales for such a strict waiver rule. The opinion in Pierce itself explains that [t]he rationale [for waiver] is clearly to prevent a review of the sufficiency of the evidence when the moving party has not given notice of its objection while there is still an opportunity for the opposing party to cure any defects in proof. 823 F.2d at 1369. Here, if the appellants believed that there was no evidence to support a split verdict — in other words, that if the jury found no liability for Lees, there was no evidence on which it could base a finding of liability for the corporate defendants — they should have raised their concern at the close of the evidence, such that Zhang could have, if necessary, introduced more evidence about the corporate defendants' liability. But not having raised the issue before the matter was submitted to the jury, the appellants cannot complain of a defect in proof for the resulting verdict. 53 The second reason for waiver is the promotion of efficiency in the trial court. If the appellants had timely made an objection to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a split verdict, and their objection had been upheld, they would have been entitled to an instruction preventing the jury from finding liability for the corporate defendants unless the jury also found liability for Lees. As it happened, however, the jury was left with instructions that did not forbid, and at least implicitly authorized, the result that it returned. We cannot sanction the time and expense of a new trial on the basis of an alleged inconsistency that, had it been raised earlier, could have been remedied by proper instructions to the jury. 54 This rule is consistent with the approach of our sister circuits. In Jarvis v. Ford Motor Co., 283 F.3d 33 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1019, 123 S.Ct. 539, 154 L.Ed.2d 427 (2002), the Second Circuit considered a similar case in which the defendant made an objection to the sufficiency of the evidence to support two different general verdicts. Id. at 54-56. The court applied a strict waiver rule, holding that where any potential error related to the jury instructions and the verdict sheet, the defendants objection needed to conform to the strictures of Fed.R.Civ.P. 51. 283 F.3d at 54. Furthermore, although the appellants rely heavily on the Tenth Circuit's opinion in Heno v. Sprint/United Management Co., 208 F.3d 847 (10th Cir.2000), that case, like Pierce, involved the sufficiency of factual findings in a special verdict to support the ultimate determination of liability. Id. at 851 (noting that waiver does not apply to special verdicts). The court held that a factual finding that a corporation's agent did not discriminate precluded a legal conclusion that the corporation was liable for discrimination. Id. at 852. Nothing in Heno suggests that, when the jury returns a general verdict, an inconsistency between conclusions as to liability on different claims requires vacating the judgment.
55 The appellants' claim that the split verdict between the federal law and Washington state law discrimination claims is inconsistent fails because such inconsistencies, when permitted by jury instructions, are simply not reviewable upon appeal. 7 Unless one legal conclusion is the prerequisite for another, inconsistencies between them must stand. 56 Zhang argues that the appellants have waived this argument entirely because they failed to raise it at all before the district court. As discussed above, the appellants did propose jury instructions on discrimination under federal and state law, but these proposed instructions did not address the contention that liability for both claims was necessarily coextensive. We could, therefore, ignore this issue entirely because it was never raised below, but we may consider an issue raised for the first time on appeal if ... the issue presented is purely one of law and the opposing party will suffer no prejudice as a result of the failure to raise the issue in the trial court. United States v. Carlson, 900 F.2d 1346, 1349 (9th Cir.1990). We consider the issue of the legal equivalency of two claims to be a purely legal issue, and Zhang is in the same position as he would have been had this issue been raised in a Rule 59 motion for a new trial; he is not prejudiced. We will therefore treat this claim as if it had been raised in a motion for a new trial. 8 57 Nonetheless, even if the error had been raised before the district court, we could not grant a new trial on the basis of legally irreconcilable general verdicts. Rule 59 does not specify the grounds on which a motion for a new trial may be granted; instead, it allows such a motion to be granted for any of the reasons for which new trials have heretofore been granted in actions at law in the courts of the United States. Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(a). We are thus bound by those grounds that have been historically recognized. 58 We have found no Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit cases in which an appellate court has directed the trial court to grant a new trial due to inconsistencies between general verdicts, and Ninth Circuit precedent dictates that we cannot do so. In International Longshoremen's Union v. Hawaiian Pineapple Co., 226 F.2d 875 (9th Cir.1955), we explained that legally inconsistent verdicts may nonetheless stand on appeal even though inconsistent. Id. at 881. In that case, the jury had returned general verdicts holding the defendant unions liable while exonerating the individual defendants who had acted on behalf of the unions. Id. While the court admitted difficulty in understanding why the jury found [the unions] liable and did not also hold some of the leaders responsible, id., it upheld that jury's right to do so. That is the jury's prerogative. Id. 59 We are confident that this rule is historically sound and remains the majority rule. In Jayne v. Mason & Dixon Lines, 124 F.2d 317 (2d Cir.1941), Judge Learned Hand stated in dicta that it would not have been fatal to a split general verdict if no rational reconciliation of the verdicts was possible. Id. at 319. More recently, in Los Angeles v. Heller, 475 U.S. 796, 106 S.Ct. 1571, 89 L.Ed.2d 806 (1986), Justice Stevens cited Jayne among the authorities supporting the proposition that a court retains the authority, even in a civil case, to allow an apparently inconsistent verdict to stand. Id. at 805 n. 12 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 9 See also Westinghouse Elec. Corp. v. Gen. Circuit Breaker & Elec. Supply Inc., 106 F.3d 894, 902 (9th Cir.1997) (noting without disapproval a litigant's observation that the law forbids a judge from upsetting general verdicts merely because they are inconsistent as to different claims); Mosley v. Wilson, 102 F.3d 85, 90 (3d Cir.1996) (discussing Heller ); Arthur Pew Constr. Co. v. Lipscomb, 965 F.2d 1559, 1571 (11th Cir.1992) (No authority is suggested to us that requires that general verdicts be harmonious....); Hines v. IBG Int'l, Inc., 813 F.2d 1331, 1334 (4th Cir.1987) (in a case involving general verdicts, incapable of being nicely dissected into their constituent parts, an apparent inconsistency is not fatal); Merchant v. Ruhle, 740 F.2d 86, 91 (1st Cir.1984) (expressing, in a case involving split general verdicts on two claims, a substantial reluctance to consider inconsistency in civil jury verdicts a basis for new trials); Globus v. Law Research Serv., Inc., 418 F.2d 1276, 1290 n. 7 (2d Cir.1969) ([C]onsistent jury verdicts are not, in themselves, necessary attributes of a valid judgment.); U.S. Football League v. Nat'l Football League, 644 F.Supp. 1040, 1045-46 (S.D.N.Y.1986); Malm v. United States Lines Co., 269 F.Supp. 731, 731-732 (S.D.N.Y.), aff'd, 378 F.2d 941 (2d Cir.1967) (per curiam) (Inconsistent jury verdicts upon different counts or claims are not an anomaly in the law, which at times recognizes a jury's right to an idiosyncratic position, provided the challenged verdict is based upon the evidence and the law.); Alexander M. Bickel, Judge and Jury-Inconsistent Verdicts in the Federal Courts, 63 Harv. L.Rev. 649, 654-55 (1950) (arguing that the rule in criminal cases that inconsistent verdicts are allowed to stand should also apply in civil cases). But see Diamond Shamrock Corp. v. Zinke & Trumbo, Ltd., 791 F.2d 1416, 1425 (10th Cir.1986) (stating in dicta that in cases where the several causes of action are identical and defended on the same ground, a verdict for the plaintiff on one cause of action and for the defendant on another is inconsistent); Will v. Comprehensive Accounting Corp., 776 F.2d 665, 677 (7th Cir.1985) (As a rule civil juries must return consistent verdicts.... The civil jury has no power to dispense clemency, and verdicts in the teeth of the evidence may be set right. (citations omitted)); Shaun P. Martin, Rationalizing the Irrational: The Treatment of Untenable Federal Civil Jury Verdicts, 28 Creighton L.Rev. 683, 708 (1995) (opining, after noting that many federal courts accept inconsistent general verdicts, that this view is almost certainly wrong). 60 Another persuasive line of cases involves discrepancies between findings of liability and damage awards, typically arising when a jury finds liability but nonetheless awards zero damages. As noted above, the damage award is not really a separate general verdict, but it is nonetheless a legal conclusion, and so these types of cases also involve purported conflicts between two legal conclusions. In Fairmount Glass Works v. Cub Fork Coal Co., 287 U.S. 474, 53 S.Ct. 252, 77 L.Ed. 439 (1933), the Supreme Court refused to disturb such a verdict, even though the petitioner had urged that the verdict should have been set aside as inconsistent on its face. Id. at 483, 53 S.Ct. 252. Justice Brandeis wrote that the trial court's refusal to grant a new trial cannot be held erroneous as a matter of law. Appellate courts should be slow to impute to juries a disregard of their duties, and to trial courts a want of diligence or perspicacity in appraising the jury's conduct. Id. at 485, 53 S.Ct. 252. This rule retains vitality, and we have noted that the federal rule is that failure to award damages does not by itself render a verdict invalid. Philippine Nat'l Oil Co. v. Garrett Corp., 724 F.2d 803, 806 (9th Cir.1984). 61 The only circumstance in which we have reviewed the consistency of two legal conclusions is that presented in Vaughan, in which the jury makes multiple legal conclusions relating to a single claim, one of which may be legally predicated on another. The Vaughan jury had returned two legal conclusions, neither of which was the ultimate verdict: It had found that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, and that the defendants had violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. See 950 F.2d at 1466. We did not, as noted above, examine whether these split findings could be supported by sufficient evidence, but we did conduct some review, examining whether it was  possible to reconcile the verdicts. Id. at 1470. Concluding that it was not legally impossible for a jury to make both of these conclusions, we upheld the verdict. Id. 62 In this case, there is no legal reason that the verdicts on the two discrimination claims would have had to be identical. Neither is predicated on the other, nor is exoneration from discrimination under state law an affirmative defense to discrimination under federal law. Instead, this is exactly the type of apparent inconsistency between general verdicts that has long been allowed to stand in this Circuit and others. 63 Like defects in the sufficiency of the evidence, the potential for a legally irreconcilable verdict should be addressed through jury instructions properly proposed under Rule 51. See Jarvis, 283 F.3d at 56 (Objection to an inconsistency between two general verdicts that is traced to an alleged error in the jury instruction or verdict sheet is properly made under Fed.R.Civ.P. 51.); Merchant, 740 F.2d at 91 (noting that the defendant had agreed to instructions allowing the jury to find liability on either of two claims). Under Rule 51, instructional errors are waived if not raised in a timely fashion. To excuse [the appellants] from the well-established rules of waiver would permit the sort of `sandbagging' that the rules are designed to prevent, while undermining the ideal of judicial economy that the rules are meant to serve. Jarvis, 283 F.3d at 62. The appellants might have thought that it was advantageous not to propose instructions equating the claims alleging discrimination under federal and Washington law, because the jury then might have concluded that they were liable on both claims. 64
65 Inconsistencies involving findings of fact, such as those in special verdicts and interrogatories, may arise in similar ways as inconsistencies between general verdicts. First, a jury may return answers that plainly violate its instructions. Second, under the evidence presented in the case, one or more findings of fact may be inconsistent with a determination of liability, whether that determination is made by the jury (as in a general verdict with interrogatories) or by the trial court (as in a special verdict). This sort of inconsistency was alleged in Pierce. See 823 F.2d at 1370. Finally, one or more findings of fact may be legally irreconcilable with each other or with a legal conclusion. Here, the appellants argue that the jury's answers on the breach of contract claim, awarding $86,000 in damages while finding $87,500 in wages willfully withheld, presents the third type of inconsistency because it is legally impossible for double damages to exceed base damages and for an employer to withhold willfully more wages than are due. 66 The typical case of factual findings conflicting with legal conclusions arises in the context of a special verdict or a general verdict with interrogatories. In the case of a special verdict, inconsistencies are problematic and require a new trial only if they arise between two or more factual findings; otherwise, the determination of liability can simply be conformed to the factual findings. Similarly, in the case of a general verdict with interrogatories, the trial court has the discretion to enter judgment on the factual findings, even if they conflict with the jury's conclusion as to liability, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(b); only if there is a conflict within the factual findings would a new trial be required. 67 The alleged inconsistency here, however, arises not between two factual findings, or between a factual finding and the ultimate determination of liability, but between a factual finding and subsidiary legal conclusion within a single claim. On the issue of double damages, the trial court is required to enter judgment according to the jury's factual findings, awarding damages of $87,500; but to do so would conflict with the jury's legal conclusion as to the base damages, which it found to be $86,000. Although both damage awards are legal conclusions, this inconsistency does present a problem of legal irreconcilability because double damages are normally predicated upon, and cannot exceed, base damages. Thus if the trial court were to have followed the principle that judgment should be entered according to the jury's factual finding, it would have entered an apparently irreconcilable verdict where double damages exceeded base damages. 68 The district court's actual response to this dilemma was to remit the double damages award to $86,000, thus preventing any irreconcilable conflict in the final judgment. But a trial court cannot ignore the jury's factual findings in an attempt to reconcile the ultimate legal conclusions; to the contrary, legal conclusions should be conformed to the factual findings, if at all possible. We must determine whether the jury's answers were truly irreconcilable, because if they were, remittitur could not save the verdict. 10 69 The appellants bear a high burden to establish an irreconcilable inconsistency. The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States except according to the rules of the common law. We must accept any reasonable interpretation of the jury's actions, reconciling the jury's findings by exegesis if necessary, Gallick v. Baltimore & O. R.R. Co., 372 U.S. 108, 119, 83 S.Ct. 659, 9 L.Ed.2d 618 (1963); a search for one possible view of the case which will make the jury's finding inconsistent results in a collision with the Seventh Amendment. Atl. & Gulf Stevedores, Inc. v. Ellerman Lines, Ltd., 369 U.S. 355, 364, 82 S.Ct. 780, 7 L.Ed.2d 798 (1962). Furthermore, we review the consistency of the jury's verdict in light of the instructions given. Grosvenor Properties, Ltd. v. Southmark Corp., 896 F.2d 1149, 1151 (9th Cir.1990). 70 The jury was specifically instructed to award damages for breach of contract exclusive of damages previously awarded for discrimination: 71 [I]f you find for plaintiff on his sixth claim for breach of contract, your damage award for that claim must be limited to the lost wages and benefits from the date of termination to September 29, 1999. Any damages you award for plaintiff's sixth claim should not include any damages you have previously awarded plaintiff on his [discrimination claims]. 72 In other words, the jury was instructed not to double-count any lost wages that had been withheld due to discrimination and awarded as damages on the discrimination claim. For double damages, the jury was simply asked how much in wages and benefits had been willfully withheld from Zhang prior to September 29, 1999; the jury was given no similar instruction against double-counting. 73 We agree with the district court's analysis that these answers can be reconciled because some of the lost wages likely were awarded as damages for the discrimination claim. If the jury had determined that at least $1500 of Zhang's wages prior to September 29, 1999, had been withheld due to discrimination and awarded that amount as part of the damages for discrimination, there would be no inconsistency. The total amount of lost wages and benefits, including those awarded as part of the discrimination award, may have been substantially greater than $86,000 or $87,500. 11 74 Washington law allows for double damages for lost wages and benefits that were willfully withheld, but it does not specify that lost wages also awarded as damages for another claim, and not double-counted for the breach of contract claim, cannot form the basis for doubling. Thus, under applicable law, it was possible for the jury to award more in double damages than in damages for the breach of contract claim, because some of the damages that otherwise would have been awarded for breach of contract were already awarded for discrimination. It is a reasonable possibility that the jury was not confused and that its answers were not inconsistent. In such a case, we must honor the jury's verdict. 75 The trial court did not err in refusing to vacate the jury's damages awards for breach of contract. The verdict was not irreconcilable, and the deference owed to jury verdicts under the Seventh Amendment requires that any reconcilable verdict must stand.