Opinion ID: 557349
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jury instructions with respect to municipal liability

Text: 37 The trial judge instructed the jury that failure to train could serve as the basis of County liability if the County exhibited a reckless disregard for or a deliberate indifference to the safety of its inhabitants. The instructions given by the district court required a higher mental state than the gross negligence standard prescribed by this circuit at that time. See Bergquist v. County of Cochise, 806 F.2d 1364, 1369-70 (9th Cir.1986). The County did not object to the instructions. After trial, however, the Supreme Court held in City of Canton v. Harris that failure-to-train liability is proper only where the failure to train amounts to deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the police come into contact. 489 U.S. at 388, 109 S.Ct. at 1204. 38 Mason County now argues that it was reversible error to instruct on the reckless disregard standard for failure-to-train liability in addition to the deliberate indifference standard. We have held that where a jury instruction correctly stated the law of the circuit at the time it was given, yet subsequent authority changed the law, consideration on appeal is not barred by the fact that no exception was taken to the instruction at the time of trial. Robinson v. Heilman, 563 F.2d 1304, 1307 (9th Cir.1977). No exception is required when it would not have produced any results in the trial court because a 'solid wall of Circuit authority' then foreclosed the point. Id. The rationale for this rule is that while district courts should not be burdened by objections to settled points of law, neither should parties be penalized for failing to object if this settled law is later overturned. 39 Bergquist is not, however, a solid wall of Circuit authority regarding the mental state sufficient to find failure-to-train liability. Although in Bergquist we did hold that a policy of gross negligence in training could give rise to a claim for section 1983 liability, we said that [t]he Supreme Court expressly reserved the question whether 'something less than intentional conduct, such as recklessness or gross negligence, is enough to trigger the protections of the Due Process Clause.'  Bergquist, 806 F.2d at 1370 (quoting Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 334 n. 3, 106 S.Ct. 662, 667 n. 3, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986)). The Supreme Court subsequently answered this question in City of Canton. In Bergquist, by saying that the question was left open by the Supreme Court, we clearly indicated that the state of mind sufficient to find failure-to-train liability was not a settled point of law. Thus, the Robinson exception for waiving objections does not apply to the issue in this case. Mason County, having failed to object to the jury instruction, lost the right to raise this issue on appeal. Robert's Waikiki U-Drive, Inc. v. Budget Rent-A-Car Sys., Inc., 732 F.2d 1403, 1410 (9th Cir.1984). 40 Even if Mason County did object to the jury instruction regarding the standard for municipal liability, we still would hold that the district court did not commit reversible error. We examine whether or not the instructions taken as a whole were misleading or represented a statement inadequate to guide the jury's deliberations. United States v. Kessi, 868 F.2d 1097, 1101 (9th Cir.1989). The instructions given by the district court allowed the jury to find municipal liability only upon a showing of reckless disregard or deliberate indifference. We do not find the court's instructions, taken as a whole, to be inconsistent with the deliberate indifference standard enunciated in City of Canton. In City of Canton, the Court stated that the need for more or different training [may be] so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent. 489 U.S. at 390, 109 S.Ct. at 1205. 41 Similarly, the district court in this case instructed that a person acts with reckless disregard when he disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur of which he is aware, or which is so obvious that he must have been aware of it, and his disregard of that risk is a gross deviation from conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. (Emphasis added). The district court's definition of reckless disregard is effectively the same as the language cited from City of Canton; both allow a jury to impose municipal liability in failure-to-train cases for acts that so clearly violate the rights of an individual that the policymakers can be said to be deliberately indifferent. 42 In fact, after City of Canton, two circuits have suggested that Sec. 1983 liability may be imposed on a municipality if it exhibits a reckless disregard for an individual's constitutional rights. See D.T. v. Independent School Dist. No. 16, 894 F.2d 1176, 1192-93 (10th Cir.) ([u]nder the standard [for municipal liability] mandated by [City of Canton ] ... the evidence in this case is simply insufficient to demonstrate that the School District's policy reflected a reckless disregard or deliberate indifference ) (emphasis added), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 213, 112 L.Ed.2d 172 (1990); Clipper v. Takoma Park, Maryland, 876 F.2d 17, 20-21 (4th Cir.1989) (reaffirming the deliberate indifference to or reckless disregard to standard used in Spell v. McDaniel, 824 F.2d 1380 (4th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1027, 108 S.Ct. 752, 98 L.Ed.2d 765 (1988)). But see Calvert Ins. Co. v. Western Ins. Co., 874 F.2d 396, 400 n. 5 (7th Cir.1989) ([a] recent Supreme Court case has held that an allegation of mere reckless failure to train does not state a cause of action against a municipality under Sec. 1983). 43