Opinion ID: 741849
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Objective analysis of the mandate

Text: 21 Cases with analogous fact situations are instructive in determining the scope of the mandate. In Conway, a case cited and relied upon by the district court, the plaintiff moved for a new trial on two separate grounds. 644 F.2d at 1060. The district court granted the motion based on the first ground only. The court of appeals reversed, discussing only the first ground. After receipt of the mandate from the first appeal, judgment was entered for the defendant based on the jury verdict. The plaintiffs then moved again for a new trial, re-urging the ground previously ignored by the district court. The district court granted this motion and the court of appeals affirmed. On this second appeal, the court noted that, on the first appeal, the appellate court discussed and passed upon only the first ground urged by the plaintiffs' motion for a new trial. Nor did the briefs of the parties at that appeal rely upon or discuss the second ground.... Id. at 1061. The court held that the law of the case doctrine applies only to those issues decided expressly or by necessary implication. Id. at 1062. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit also stated: 22 The law of the case doctrine did not operate to prevent the district court from considering [the second ground], a meritorious issue never previously passed upon by it and never submitted to or decided by the appellate court on the previous appeal. The new trial so granted was within the power of the district court to grant. 23 Id. 24 This case is highly analogous to Conway. Here, the trial court granted only one of three JMOL motions filed by NEC, ruling on only one of three grounds urged by NEC. We reversed in an appeal from only that ruling in Laitram II. When NEC argued in the status conference call of September 8, 1995 that the motions for JMOL on the willfulness and claim identicality must be heard and decided because the reversal of the JMOL on the infringement issue rendered them no longer moot, it was within the power of the district court to reach those issues, just as it was within the power of the district court to reach the alternative ground for a new trial in Conway. The motions for JMOL on willfulness and claim identicality, like the alternative ground for a new trial in Conway, are meritorious issue[s] never previously passed upon by [the district court] and never submitted to or decided by the appellate court on the previous appeal. Conway, 644 F.2d at 1062. Thus, although cited by the district court in support of its refusal to rule on the two motions for JMOL that remained undecided, Conway, properly interpreted, actually shows that NEC was entitled to its requested rulings which in no way were precluded by the mandate. We therefore hold that, after our mandate to reinstate the jury verdict, it was within the power of the district court (and outside the scope of the mandate) to rule on the two remaining motions for JMOL--on the willfulness and claim identicality issues; and because the issues were no longer moot and could have affected aspects of the final judgment in the suit, the district court was obligated to rule on them. 25 On appeal, Laitram, in seeking to justify the district court's refusal to rule on the undecided motions, relies on Lindsey v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 810 F.2d 1094 (11th Cir.1987), for the proposition that a mandate to reinstate a jury verdict necessarily means to reinstate the entire verdict. In Lindsey, there were jury verdicts finding an Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) violation and willfulness. The trial judge granted defendant the equivalent of what is now called a renewed motion for JMOL, a Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict (JNOV). The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the grant, analyzing only the violation question. The mandate was to reverse and remand for appropriate entry of judgment on the basis of the jury verdict. Lindsey v. American Cast Iron Pipe Co., 772 F.2d 799, 802 (11th Cir.1985). On remand, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant presented additional evidence on the willfulness issue. The district court, however, made its own finding on willfulness, finding non-willfulness in conflict with the jury's explicit finding of willfulness. Lindsey, 810 F.2d at 1097. During the second appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, the court stated: [t]he court was not at liberty to make findings that conflicted with the jury's findings. Id. The court noted that [t]his court reinstated the jury verdict, and the jury's fact findings became part of our mandate.... Under the law of the case doctrine, a district court may not deviate from the appellate court's mandate. Id. (citations omitted). 26 Lindsey, however, is in no way inconsistent with our ruling here. On remand, the district court in Lindsey did not, as would be the parallel to this case, consider a JNOV as to the willfulness issue, and thus decide a question of law, but rather substituted its own finding for that of the jury, thereby acting as a substitute finder of fact. The court of appeals in Lindsey correctly noted that [o]nce a jury has necessarily or actually decided [such] an issue, the district court may not reconsider it, Lindsey, 810 F.2d at 1098. But it did not reach the analog to the question presented here: whether the district court could properly have considered a motion for JNOV on the willfulness issue. Thus, the case is inapposite. Even if it were apposite, Lindsey does not stand for the broad proposition urged by Laitram. 27 Laitram also seeks to rely on Leroy v. City of Houston, 906 F.2d 1068 (5th Cir.1990), for the proposition that even issues never discussed in the opinion by the court of appeals are nevertheless all subsumed in its mandate. In Leroy, the mandate contained a specific dollar amount judgment, but on remand the district court recalculated interest and decided other damages issues. On appeal of the final judgment, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stated: The fact that we did not expressly address the expenses in question is irrelevant, the point being that we vacated the judgment that included them and directed entry of judgment for a specific figure, which the district court thereafter exceeded. Id. at 1077. 28 The reasoning in Leroy is entirely inapplicable here because the mandate there included a specific dollar figure for the damages to be awarded and in reversing the district court, the court of appeals relied explicitly on the fact that the district court award exceeded the specific dollar amount mandated. While it would have been within the power of the district court to re-open issues not addressed expressly or by necessary implication by the court of appeals, it was clearly not within its power to award a different amount of money than that mandated explicitly by the court of appeals. Here, since damages were not addressed in Laitram II, and since nothing the district court could have done on the open issues could conflict with explicit statements in our mandate, the rule of Leroy does not apply. 29