Opinion ID: 78397
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: standard of review

Text: Our review of a district court's grant of a new trial is extremely stringent when the district court discards the verdict on the ground it is against the great weight of the evidence. Redd v. City of Phenix City, 934 F.2d 1211, 1215 (11th Cir.1991). While it is within a district court's discretion to grant a new trial if it finds a jury's verdict is against the great, not merely the greater weight of the evidence, our application of this more rigorous standard of review ensures the district court does not simply substitute its own credibility choices and inferences for the reasonable choices and inferences made by the jury. Id. at 1214-15; see also Hardin v. Hayes, 52 F.3d 934, 938 (11th Cir.1995) (noting the scope of discretion is narrower when the district court concludes the jury verdict was contrary to the great weight of the evidence). [2] If the jury's verdict is supported by the evidence, then it is immaterial that we or the district judge would have arrived at the same verdict because it is not our place to substitute our judgment for that of the jury. See Redd, 934 F.2d at 1215; Griffin v. Swim-Tech Corp., 722 F.2d 677, 679 n. 1 (11th Cir. 1984) (The question is whether or not reasonable jurors could have concluded as this jury did based upon the evidence presented.). In our extremely stringent review, we will examine the legal standard by which the jury was instructed to evaluate Auto-Owners' duty of good faith in handling and settling of the claim, along with Southeast's theory of Auto-Owners' bad faith. [3] In the subsequent sections of this opinion, we will consider the evidence the jury heard at trial and then determine whether reasonable inferences that could be drawn from the evidence support the jury's verdict.