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

Heading: Legal irreconcilability

Text: 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