Opinion ID: 2154496
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: The Requested Jury Instruction

Text: On the next-to-last day of trial, the court asked the parties to submit their proposed jury instructions. That night, UDC faxed to the court a number of special instructions. UDC's proposed Special Jury Instruction Number 10 read as follows: In determining whether the plaintiff had an ownership right to the property in question, you cannot find that the plaintiff had any ownership rights over property purchased with or derived from grant money awarded to the University of District of Columbia. 31 U.S.C. § 6301, et seq.; 45 CFR Part 74; NSF Grants Policy Manual. The next morning, the court informed the parties of the instructions it had prepared in consideration of the parties' requests. Although the court's instructions included nothing along the lines of UDC's proposed Number 10, UDC never objected to the omission (though its counsel did object to the omission of other instructions). UDC claims that the court committed reversible error in failing to give its requested instruction. At the time of trial, however, Civil Rule 51 provided that [n]o party may assign as error the giving or the failure to give an instruction unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter objected to and the grounds of the objection. [43] A party's failure to register a proper and timely objection limits the scope of our review to plain error. [44] UDC asks us to disregard its failure to object because the trial court had rejected the theory of Special Jury Instruction Number 10 when it declined to grant UDC judgment as a matter of law, and further objection would have been futile. [45] That is incorrect. The court had not yet rejected the possibility of partial judgment for UDC on its ownership claimit deferred its final ruling on UDC's Rule 50 motion until after the jury returned its verdictand it never disagreed with the proposition embodied in the proposed instruction, that property purchased or derived from UDC grant funds belonged to UDC. We have no reason to believe an objection to the omission of Special Jury Instruction Number 10 would have been unavailing. Review for plain error is rigorous; we have said that we may grant relief for an unpreserved claim of instructional deficiency only where it is apparent from the face of the record that a miscarriage of justice has occurred. [46] As is evident from our discussion of UDC's Rule 50 motion, there was no plain error here. The jury needed no instruction to understand that UDC, not Dr. Vossoughi, owned any property acquired with or derived from UDC grant funds. As presented at trial, this was not a subtle or difficult point. It was a central theme of UDC's defense, which UDC's counsel forcefully reiterated in her closing argument: she reminded the jury of the governing regulations (which were admitted in evidence) and of grant administrator Levermore's explanatory testimony, and she exhorted the jurors to examine each receipt before it to identify and exclude the items Dr. Vossoughi had purchased with UDC money. Moreover, there was no genuine dispute about UDC's ownership of grant-derived property, and Dr. Vossoughi's counsel essentially conceded the point. On the record before us, therefore, we have no reason to suppose the jury was either unable or unwilling to apply the correct rule of ownership in its deliberations.