Opinion ID: 222738
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Town's Appeal

Text: The Town renews the substance of its Rule 59(e) request to amend the judgment to reflect that the Town and its officers are jointly and severally liable for the damages awarded to each plaintiff who prevailed on a state-law claim. Resolving this issue requires us to identify some fundamental missteps in the way these claims were submitted to the jury. From the beginning, the plaintiffs sought to hold the Town liable on the state-law tort claims under the doctrine of respondeat superior. That is, the Town would be vicariously liable for the torts of its officers if their actions were undertaken within the scope of their employment. See Adames v. Sheahan, 233 Ill.2d 276, 330 Ill.Dec. 720, 909 N.E.2d 742, 754 (2009). Before trial the Town stipulated that its officers were acting within the scope of their employment during the altercation at the Duran home. As a result there were no factual issues for the jury to decide in connection with the Town's liability on the state tort claims. Based on the scope-of-employment stipulation, the Town would be liable to any plaintiff who prevailed against an individual officer on any of the state tort claims. This liability would be joint and several, not cumulative; the Town and the individual officer would be jointly and severally liable for whatever sum of money the jury awarded as damages to compensate any individual prevailing plaintiff for his injury. That is, if any officer was found liable to an individual plaintiff, the Town's vicarious liability would flow as a matter of law from its pretrial stipulation, but jointly and to the extent of the officer's liability, not for an additional amount. Accordingly, the issue of the Town's liability should not have been submitted to the jury at all; once the Town entered its stipulation on the scope-of-employment issue, its liability became solely a postverdict legal matter for the court. In Illinois, as elsewhere, a plaintiff may receive only one full compensation for his or her injuries, and double recovery for the same injury is not allowed. Thornton v. Garcini, 237 Ill.2d 100, 340 Ill.Dec. 557, 928 N.E.2d 804, 811 (2010). Although the jury instructions alluded to this principle, they did so in a way that sowed confusion, and this confusion was compounded by the special-verdict form. In relevant part the jury was instructed as follows: The defendant Town of Cicero is legally responsible for the acts of its employees committed within the scope of their employment. The town agrees that the defendant police officers were acting within the scope of their employment by the Town, and therefore, if you find in favor of a plaintiff and against any of the defendant officers on any of the state law claims, the amount of damages that you award the plaintiff against that individual defendant should also be awarded against the defendant Town. This does not mean that the plaintiff would receive a double recovery; it simply means that the individual defendant and the Town would be jointly liable for the amount of your verdict against the individual defendant. (Emphasis added.). This instruction was perplexing. Why was the jury being asked to assess damages against individual officers and the Town for the same injury? The jury was obviously confused. During deliberations, the foreman sent the following question to the district judge: Dear Judge  In awarding compensatory damages, if we find in favor of the plaintiff under multiple state law claims, is the town liable for half of the total amount? Here's an example of how we understand it: Find in favor of Plaintiff A on State Law Claim #1 and State Law Claim #2. And we feel it should be a total of $30. With us feeling that $20 on State Law Claim #1 & $10 on State Law Claim #2, would we find State Law Claim for Defendant Claim #1 → $10 + Defendant on Claim #2 → $5 + Town $15=$30. Thanks  The Jury. Jeffrey Hansen 2/14/08 11:40 a.m. The judge responded by restating the instruction we have just quoted, followed by this: Now, let me turn to your specific question that you wrote out. The answer is you return a verdict against the town for $30, because that is the total of the two amounts that you have returned for that plaintiff against that defendant on two separate claims. You don't assess the town half of the amount. You assess the town 100 percent of the amount. And the town is jointly liable. It's not liable in addition to the individual defendants for the same amount so that you guys could be talking about $60. No. It's only $30, but you have two defendants responsible to pay it, one, the individual defendant, and two, the town. (Emphasis added.) There are two problems with this approach. First, as we have noted, once the Town conceded that its officers were acting within the scope of their employment, the Town's liability on the state tort claims became a postverdict legal issue for the court; the jury should not have been asked to answer any questions about the Town's liability in the first place. Moreover, damages are not assessed by defendant or by claim but for an injury. See Thomas v. Cook Cnty. Sheriff's Dep't, 604 F.3d 293, 315-16 (7th Cir.2010) (Sykes, J., dissenting). Where a plaintiff has suffered a single, indivisible injury (as is ordinarily the case and was true here on each of the state tort claims), the jury's task is to award a sum of money to compensate the plaintiff for that injury, not to enter a damages award against each defendant who is or will be liable on the judgment. Id. Complicating an already difficult case, here the jury was asked to determine damages on a defendant-by-defendant basis and also separately for the Town. This was error, and it led directly to the problem of double recovery belatedly identified by the Town. It is true the Town itself proposed the flawed special-verdict form. It is equally true, however, that everyone  the court and all the parties  proceeded on the understanding that the Town's liability on the state-law claims was vicarious only, and knew that the Town would be jointly liable for the damages awarded to any individual plaintiff on any of the state-law claims, not for an additional amount. Thus, although the jury was (mistakenly) instructed to enter separate damages awards against individual officers and against the Town, it was also told that the same amount awarded against any individual officer should also be awarded against the Town. The judge advised the jury that this would not result in double recovery, but instead the officer and the Town would be jointly liable for a single damages award on each claim. No wonder the jury was confused; on the matter of the Town's liability, it was asked to engage in a pointless enterprise. Here are the resulting awards on the state-law claims: Plaintiff (Column A) Compensatory Damages Compensatory Damages Awarded Against Individual Awarded Against the Town Officers (Column B) (Column C) Alejandro Duran $575,000 $675,000 Adolfo Duran $585,000 $585,000 Anna Maria Duran $100,000 $100,000 Gonzalo Duran $120,000 $120,000 Luz Maria Pineda $40,000 $40,000 Ignacio Rodriguez $100,000 $100,000 Javier Rodriguez $25,000 $25,000 Ruben Pineda $75,000 $100,000 Joel Uribe $25,000 $25,000 Heriberto Uribe, Sr. $25,000 $25,000 Juan Carlos Uribe $25,000 $25,000 Silvia Pineda $25,000 $25,000 Armando Duran $25,000 $25,000 Amada Duran -- $40,000 Daniel Pineda -- $15,000 Alma Rodriguez -- $10,000 Kathy Bonilla -- $10,000 Maria Concepcion Duran -- $100,000 Juana Maribel Escareno -- $12,500 Jose Refugio Paredes -- $25,000 Amanda Paredes -- $10,000 Jose Paredes -- $10,000 Juana Soto Uribe -- $50,000 The dashes appearing in Column B reflect the state-law claims against unidentified officers for injuries suffered by the plaintiffs listed in Column A. (Recall that the Town had accepted vicarious liability for the torts of the unidentified officers when it stipulated that all of its officers were acting in the scope of their employment.) The proper way to submit the state-law claims to the jury would have been to ask the liability questions first using John Doe Officer or a similar designation to determine the liability of the unnamed officers. Then the jury should have been asked to enter a single damages award to compensate each plaintiff for his or her injury, not to enter separate damages awards against each defendant  whether an individual officer or the Town. Although the verdict form was flawed, it appears that the jury tried to comply with the court's specific instruction that the amount awarded against any individual officer should also be awarded against the Town. This can be inferred from the fact that 11 of the 13 plaintiffs who had claims against identified officers (these 13 plaintiffs are listed in bold) received a compensatory-damages award against an individual officer (Column B) and the Town (Column C) in exactly the same amount. For two of these plaintiffs, however, the award in Column C is greater than the award in Column B. For example, Alejandro Duran received a damages award of $550,000 on his malicious-prosecution claim against Officer Michael McMahon and another $25,000 on his emotional-distress claim against Officer Walter Wirack. This total of $575,000 is reflected in Column B, yet the jury awarded him $675,000 against the Town. The likely explanation for this extra $100,000 is that the jury was awarding compensation for a separate injury Alejandro Duran suffered at the hands of an unidentified officer. [2] Moreover, ten plaintiffs (the ones not listed in bold) received damages awards against the Town despite not having prevailed against an individually named officer. Because the Town's liability is derivative, the jury was obviously compensating these ten plaintiffs on claims for injuries they suffered at the hands of unidentified officers. Given the confusing verdict form and instructions, the jury should be commended for managing as well as it did. The judgment entered on the verdicts, however, did not reflect the joint and several nature of the Town's liability. For example, on plaintiff Javier Rodriguez's battery claim, the district court entered judgment in favor of Rodriguez and against Officer Peslak in the amount of $25,000, and in favor of Rodriguez against the Town in the amount of $25,000, without any mention that this liability is joint and several. This appears to permit Rodriguez to recover twice  once from the Town and once from Peslak  for the same injury. A motion to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e) may be granted to correct a manifest error of law or fact. Harrington v. City of Chicago, 433 F.3d 542, 546 (7th Cir.2006). A judgment that can be read to allow a plaintiff to recover twice for the same injury contains a manifest error of law. The Town's Rule 59(e) motion proposed nothing more than an obvious fix for a glaring double-recovery problem in the judgment. [3] In denying the Rule 59(e) motion, the district court held that the Town had waived any right to relief by not objecting at trial to the verdict form or jury instructions that gave rise to the confusing judgment. This waiver rationale misses the point. True, the Town bears some responsibility for the flawed special-verdict form. Still, it's the judge's responsibility to get the verdict form right, not just pick one side's proposal or the other's. Thomas, 604 F.3d at 315 (Sykes, J., dissenting). In any event, the Town's Rule 59(e) motion was directed at a legal error in the judgment (not the verdict form), and here there can be no principled disagreement that the judgment fails to reflect what everyone understood from the beginning: that the Town would be jointly liable (if liable at all) to any plaintiff who prevailed on a state tort claim against an individual officer, whether identified or unidentified. The Town did not waive this legal point about the nature of its liability. The Town's timely Rule 59(e) motion identified a manifest error of law that surfaced only after judgment was entered. See Cnty. of McHenry v. Ins. Co. of the West, 438 F.3d 813, 819 (7th Cir.2006). Beyond defending the court's misplaced waiver rationale, the plaintiffs advance one other argument for leaving the judgment as is. They cite Zivitz v. Greenberg, 279 F.3d 536, 540 (7th Cir.2002), for the proposition that double recovery should not be presumed where the jury could reasonably have based its verdict on separate injuries sustained by the plaintiff. The plaintiffs suggest that the jury might have intended all the awards listed above in Column C to represent damages awarded to the prevailing plaintiffs for torts committed by unidentified police officers. There is nothing in the record to support this interpretation of the jury's verdict. To the contrary, the jury was specifically instructed that the amount of damages it assessed against any individual officer must also be assessed against the Town; we assume that the jury followed this instruction. See Laxton v. Bartow, 421 F.3d 565, 573 (7th Cir.2005) (We must presume that the jury followed all the instructions it was given.). The verdict reflects that the jurors followed this guidance. The surest indication of this is the fact that with two exceptions, every plaintiff who received an award against an individual named officer on a state-law claim (reflected in Column B) received an award against the Town (reflected in Column C) in an identical amount as that awarded against the individual officer. Where the award against the Town is higher, or where a plaintiff received an award against the Town but not an individual officer, the logical inference is that the difference reflects compensation for an injury inflicted by an unidentified officer. Given how this case was submitted to the jury, this is the only sensible way to interpret the verdict. In sum, it is reasonably clear what the jury did  or at least what it was trying to do. And it is abundantly clear that the judgment must be amended to avoid the possibility of double recovery. On remand the court should clarify that the damages the jury assessed against the Town and the individual officers are not to be aggregated; the judgment should reflect that the Town is jointly liable for a single damages award in favor of each plaintiff who prevailed on a state-law claim.