Opinion ID: 694395
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the classification power--turning fact into law

Text: 245 Commentators have remarked on the temptation of appellate courts to redefine questions of fact as questions of law in order to impose the court's policy viewpoint on the decision. Professor Martin Louis calls the appellate assertion of power to treat fact as law drastic in that it amounts to a direct judicial assault on the prerogatives of fact finders. Martin B. Louis, Allocating Adjudicative Decision Making Authority Between the Trial and Appellate Levels: A Unified View of the Scope of Review, the Judge/Jury Question, and Procedural Discretion, 64 N.C.L.Rev. 993, 1018 (1986). Louis observes that the classification of ultimate facts as questions of law amounts to a manipulation of the law-fact doctrine to take questions from the jury or to subject the trial level's resolution of questions to free appellate review. Id. at 1028. Although the Seventh Amendment has provided a safeguard against this autocracy of the judiciary, concerned observers have long counselled vigilance. Thus definitions of fact and law--the methodology of this appellate power--have attracted the attention of legal scholars. 246 Law is usually defined as a statement of the general principle or rule, predicated in advance, awaiting application to particular facts as they may arise. See Francis H. Bohlen, Mixed Questions of Law and Fact, 72 U.Pa.L.Rev. 111, 112 (1924). Louis, supra, at 994, states the principle: 247 Declarations of law are fact-free general principles that are applicable to all, or at least to many, disputes and not simply to the one sub judice. 248 There is an additional element to law; that is, the duty of judicial enforcement. As Professor Thayer explained, nothing is law that is not a rule or standard which it is the duty of judicial tribunals to apply and enforce. James B. Thayer, Law and Fact in Jury Trials, 4 Harv.L.Rev. 147, 153 (1890). Thayer defines fact as follows: 249 [Fact] is what Locke expresses when he speaks of some particular existence, or, as it is usually termed, matter of fact. The fundamental conception is that of a thing as existing, or being true. It is not limited to what is tangible, or visible, or in any way the object of sense; things invisible, mere thoughts, intentions, fancies of the mind, propositions, when conceived of as existing or being true, are conceived of as facts. The question of whether a thing be a fact or not, is the question of whether it is, whether it exists, whether it be true. All inquiries into the truth, the reality, the actuality of things are inquires into the fact about them. 250 Id. at 151-52. A compilation of definitions of fact is provided in Black's Law Dictionary 591-92 (6th ed. 1990): 251 A thing done; an action performed or an incident transpiring; an event or circumstance; an actual occurrence; an actual happening in time or space or an event mental or physical; that which has taken place. 252 .... 253 .... Fact means reality of events or things the actual occurrence or existence of which is to be determined by evidence. 254 In sum, the law is a general proposition, while the fact is a case-specific inquiry. Clarence Morris, Law and Fact, 55 Harv.L.Rev. 1303, 1304 (1942), observed that a controlling distinction between law and fact is whether evidence is needed, for a question of fact usually calls for proof, whereas matters of law are established not by evidentiary showing but by intellectual abstraction. 255 These distinctions have often been discussed, usually in the course of considering the complexities that can arise, and how they have been, or should be, treated. Thus commentators and judges have written to explain the distinctions among historical facts, ultimate facts, and mixed law/fact questions, in the course of relating these distinctions to trial procedures and judicial review. The nicety that has been generated was criticized in Armour & Co. v. Wilson & Co., 274 F.2d 143, 124 USPQ 115 (7th Cir.1960), as follows: 256 We have come to speak of questions of fact, primary facts, subsidiary facts, evidentiary facts, ultimate facts, physical facts, documentary facts, oral evidence, inferences, reasonable inferences, findings of fact, conclusions, conclusions of law, questions of fact, questions of law, mixed questions of law and fact, correct criteria of law, and so on ad infinitum. The simple answer is that we are all too frequently dealing in semantics, and our choice of words does not always reflect the magic we would prefer to ascribe to them. 257 274 F.2d at 155, 124 USPQ at 124-25 (footnote omitted). See generally Steven A. Childress & Martha S. Davis, Federal Standards of Review (2d ed. 1992). 258 The character of what is a fact does not change, even in those special cases that have been held to warrant plenary appellate review. 6 The subject matter that the majority now designates as law--the disputed meaning and scope of technologic terms and words of art as used in particular inventions--is not law, but fact. On any definition of fact and law, the question of whether inventory as used in Markman's Claim 1 means only clothing or can include invoices is a question of fact: on Thayer's criterion of whether the fact exists; on Morris' criterion of whether there is a need for evidence; on Bohlen's inquiry of whether the meaning is specific to the situation sub judice. The meaning of inventory is specific to this invention, this patent, this claim, this system, this defendant. Its determination is for the trier of fact.