Opinion ID: 486555
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The district court's instructions regarding damages

Text: 14 Defendants argue that the jury instructions regarding the assessment of damages were so confusing that it is impossible to interpret the resulting verdict. It is true that the first two versions of the damage instructions were hardly a model of clarity. Moreover, there is no doubt that the instructions, altered twice in response to questions from the jury, fail to convey a consistent message. Nevertheless, in the particular circumstances of this case, we believe that the resulting verdict adequately supports the judgments rendered. 15 The jury's first question for the court--If we have agreed on a total damage figure per person, do we have to list dollar totals under each count beside each person ...--demonstrates that, from the beginning, the jury wanted to apportion damages. The judge clarified his instructions and told the jury to list just one damage figure [per] count. You don't put down for each name.... Yet the jury persisted in its desire to apportion damages, asking: Since we are now to set one sum for each count that we find for the plaintiff--if we feel then [sic] any one or more of the defendants should bare [sic] more of the burden of blame than any of the others, is there no way to make this known. This note indicates that the jury understood the judge's instruction not to apportion damages, but was unhappy with that restriction. When the judge responded to this note by permitting the jury to apportion damages, the jury returned its verdict within the space of an hour. The jury had a clear idea from the start as to how it thought damages should be assessed, and it consistently pursued that idea. 16 Although defendants claim that the verdict returned by the jury was itself ambiguous, we perceive no problem. A damage figure was assessed for each defendant on each count for which he or she was found liable. The total damages (ignoring those which were specifically labelled by the jury as duplicate) are $9,803,000--the same figure listed on the bottom of the verdict as the damage total. Defendants' alternate possible interpretations of the verdict are both implausible and unsupported in the record. The district judge apparently had no difficulty entering a judgment order, based on that verdict, which conforms with plaintiff's interpretation. Indeed, defendants' initial brief in this appeal described the damage award, in the statement of facts, in precisely the same way.