Opinion ID: 1355412
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Two Avenues of Proving Beeler's Death and the Special Verdict Form

Text: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 49 permits a court to submit to the jury either a general or special verdict form. A special verdict form requires the jury to return specific findings on issues of disputed fact raised by the parties during trial. Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(a). In the special verdict form, the court must present to the jury all material issues raised by the pleadings and evidence. U.S. Fire Ins. Co. v. Pressed Steel Tank Co., 852 F.2d 313, 318 (7th Cir.1988). We review a district court's formulation of questions on a special verdict form for an abuse of discretion. Id. at 316. The special verdict form at issue here was significantly flawed. It posed a series of three questions. A short paragraph after each question instructed the jury how to proceed based upon its answer to the preceding question. The first question listed the elements necessary to raise the presumption of death and asked the jury to determine whether the Beeler Trust had proven these elements by a preponderance of the evidence. If the jury answered no, meaning that the claimant had failed to raise the presumption of death, the form instructed the jury not to consider the remaining two questions. According to the special verdict form, such a response ended the jury's inquiry: the defendants had prevailed. If the jury found that the Beeler Trust had successfully raised the presumption of death under Question 1, the form instructed the jury to proceed to Question 2. The second question asked whether the defendants had presented evidence sufficient to rebut the presumption. If the jury found insufficient evidence to rebut the presumption, the special verdict form again instructed the jury that its inquiry was over. The result, however, was now different: an unrebutted presumption of death meant that the plaintiff had won. Recall now the two evidentiary avenues available to prove death. In addition to proving death by means of a legal presumption, claimants may also prove death the more traditional way: by direct or circumstantial evidence of the ultimate fact of the insured's death. According to the verdict form's instructions, if the jury determined, under Question 2, that the defendants had rebutted the presumption meaning that the plaintiff had failed to prove death using the presumption avenuethe jury was to proceed to the final question. There, the court asked the jury to decide whether the plaintiff, using direct or circumstantial evidence, had proven by a preponderance of the evidence that Gordon Beeler was in fact dead. We find the problem with the special verdict form in the instructions that follow Question 1. The jury answered Question 1 in the negative, meaning that it concluded that the Beeler Trust had failed to meet the elements necessary to raise the presumption of death. The jury then did as the form instructed and ended its deliberations. It never considered Question 3, which asked the jury to consider whether the plaintiff had proven death by the alternative path, through direct and circumstantial evidence of death-in-fact. Because the jury should have considered whether the plaintiff had satisfied this alternative means of proof, the erroneous instruction following Question 1 was a legal error that constituted an abuse of the district court's discretion. The district court's confusion on this point is understandable. In Roberts, the court found that the plaintiff had introduced the basic facts necessary to give rise to the presumption of death, which the defendant had subsequently rebutted. 410 N.E.2d at 1383-84. Once the presumption was rebutted, the court said that the plaintiffs were then obligated to prove, by direct and circumstantial evidence and the reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, the ultimate fact of Clarence Roberts' death. Id. at 1384. In the facts of Roberts, therefore, the presumption was rebutted, which triggered consideration of the alternative avenue of proof. But it would be illogical to require those same facts in every case. It would make no sense to conclude that the alternative avenue of direct and circumstantial evidence can be considered only when the presumption dies by rebuttal. There is no reason to distinguish those cases where the plaintiff fails to assert facts sufficient to give rise to the presumption in the first instance from those where the presumption arises but is later rebutted. What matters, as we mentioned above, is the question of the presumption's ultimate survival. If the presumption does not survive, the reason for its demise should make no difference to whether a jury must consider the alternative question of direct and circumstantial proof of death. Here, however, because of the special verdict form's construction, the trial's outcome potentially hinged on that improper distinction. Defendants advance arguments of waiver. They claim that the Beeler Trust rested its entire case on the presumption of death, that it never presented any evidence to prove Beeler's actual death, and that the lawyers never made any arguments to the jury under this alternative means of proof. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 49(a)(3). We need not decide here whether waiver of one avenue of proof in these situations is possible; for even if waiver were possible, the plaintiff did not do so here. Furthermore, the court clearly intended to allow the jury to consider both means of proof; having made that decision, the court was then obligated to present to the jury an accurate statement of the law in its instructions and verdict form. Indiana courts have recognized that the same facts that one must prove to raise the presumption of death also serve as circumstantial evidence of death-in-fact. See Roberts, 410 N.E.2d at 1383 ([T]he lengthy disappearance of Clarence Roberts, his failure to communicate with friends and family, and the fruitless search for Roberts amounted to circumstantial evidence of death....). The intermediate appellate court gave a more thorough review of this idea in Lyons: Any facts or circumstances relating to the character, habits, conditions, affections, attachments, prosperity, and objects in life, which usually control the conduct of men, and are the motives of their actions, are competent evidence from which may be inferred the death of one absent and unheard from, whatever has been the duration of such absence. A rule excluding such evidence would ignore the motives which prompt human actions, and forbid inquiry into them in order to explain the conduct of men. 98 N.E. at 826 (quoting Tisdale v. Conn. Mut. Life Ins. Co., 26 Iowa 170, 176 (Iowa 1868)). Clearly, then, the plaintiff in this case, by virtue of the evidence it advanced to demonstrate the presumption of death, also presented circumstantial evidence that would allow the jury to infer that Gordon Beeler was actually dead. Thus, we reject the defendants' arguments that the plaintiff presented no circumstantial evidence of death-in-fact and was therefore barred from presenting that question to the jury. A review of the trial transcripts also demonstrates the plaintiff's cognizance of this alternative means of proof, as well as the court's willingness to permit the jury to consider the death-in-fact question. In the instructions conference, plaintiff's counsel requested a change to Jury Instruction 22, noting that if we don't convince the jury that the presumption applies, we can still prevail in the case if the jury concludes that even without the presumption the facts support their concluding that he is dead as a matter of fact. The court recognized this and adjusted the instructions accordingly.