Court Opinion

ID: 2965388
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2015-09-21 21:39:25.215604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:43:06.476097
License: Public Domain

USCA1 Opinion

	

                 United States Court of Appeals
                     For the First Circuit

No. 97-1988

                         JAMES A. CHUTE,

                      Plaintiff, Appellant,

                                v.

     SEARS ROEBUCK AND COMPANY and EMERSON ELECTRIC COMPANY,

                      Defendants, Appellees.

           APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

                FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

    [Hon. W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., Senior U.S. District Judge]
                                 

                              Before

                      Selya, Circuit Judge,
                                
                 Bownes, Senior Circuit Judge,
                                
                   and Boudin, Circuit Judge.
                                
                                

     John F. Kehoe with whom Daly, Kehoe & Crosson, L.L.P. was on
brief for appellant.
     David A. Barry with whom William L. Boesch and Sugarman,
Rogers, Barshak & Cohen, P.C. were on brief for appellees. 

June 1, 1998

                                
                                
  BOUDIN, Circuit Judge.  James A. Chute was seriously
injured when an unknown object, possibly a piece of wood, struck him
below his left eye.  The object was thrown by a "Sears Craftsman"
radial arm saw operated by his employees.  Chute sued the saw's
seller, Sears, Roebuck & Co., on theories of negligence and breach
of warranty in Massachusetts Superior Court.  Sears removed the case
to the district court on grounds of diversity, and Chute amended his
complaint to add the saw's designer, manufacturer and distributor,
Emerson Electric Co., as a defendant.
  On June 23, 1997, after six days of trial, the jury gave
a verdict for the defendants on all counts, and also answered a set
of written interrogatories that the district court had submitted. 
See Fed. R. Civ. P. 49(b).  Chute moved for a new trial, arguing
that one of the interrogatories so confused the jury that a new
trial was required.  The district court denied that motion on July
22, 1997.  Chute now appeals, focusing primarily on the challenged
interrogatory (interrogatory 10).
  The district court gave the jury ten interrogatories in
all, the last three of which concerned the breach of warranty claim. 
These latter three queries were to be answered yes or no, and read
as follows:
  8. Was the radial saw defective as designed and
  unreasonably dangerous to someone walking or
  standing nearby while the saw was in operation?
  
  9. If "Yes," was such defective design a
  proximate cause of Chute's injury?
  10. When Chute was injured, was he acting
  unreasonably when he walked behind the saw
  without wearing safety goggles, knowing that
  the saw was defective and dangerous in that a
  piece of wood might be ejected at him?

The jury answered interrogatory 8 in the negative and did not answer
interrogatories 9 and 10.  However, Chute argues that the confusing
wording of interrogatory 10 and defects in the district court's jury
charge constrained the jury's freedom to answer interrogatory 8
affirmatively.
  During deliberations, the jury sent the following note to
the district court:
    If we, the Jury, deem #8 under breach of
  warranty as 'No.'  Do we have to answer #10. 
  If we do have to answer #10 can we strike the
  last piece of that statement or not answer at
  all.
    We cannot believe Mr. Chute would have
  knowingly had people working with the saw if he
  knew it was defective and dangerous.
The district court told counsel that the court intended to tell the
jury that if it answered interrogatory 8 negatively, it would not
have to answer 9 or 10.  The district court also said that it would
advise jurors that, should they answer both 8 and 9 affirmatively,
they could not strike any portion of 10 but must answer it as
written.  Neither side objected, and the district court so
instructed the jury.  The jury returned its verdict less than twenty
minutes later.
  Chute argued in his motion for new trial, and reasserts
here, that the jury interpreted interrogatory 10 as requiring it to
find, or at least assume, that the saw was defective and that Chute
was aware of the defect.  We know from their note that the jury
members were unwilling to make the latter finding.  Chute argues
that when the judge said that this last part of interrogatory 10
could not be struck, the jury sought a way out of the dilemma by
answering interrogatory 8 negatively, which excused it from
answering interrogatory 10.
  The trial court has broad discretion in crafting a jury
charge and interrogatories, but a new trial may be warranted if the
charge is erroneous or tends to confuse the jury on a material
issue, provided that objection was made to the district court after
the charge and before the jury retired.  Fed. R. Civ. P. 51;
O'Connor v. Huard, 117 F.3d 12, 15 (1st Cir. 1997).  If a party
fails to make a timely objection, the instruction is reviewable for
plain error only.  Cordero v. De Jesus-Mendez, 867 F.2d 1, 5 (1st
Cir. 1989).  
  A number of circuits have explicitly held that the plain
error exception, interpolated by case law into Rule 51, applies to
jury instructions but not to interrogatories.  We recently reviewed
for plain error a forfeited objection to special verdict questions
although an earlier case in this circuit could be read to support--
but not squarely to adopt--the contrary position adopted by other
circuits.  Compare Clausen v. Sea-3, Inc., 21 F.3d 1181, 1196 (1st
Cir. 1994), with Bayamon Thom McAn, Inc. v. Miranda, 409 F.2d 968,
973 (1st Cir. 1969).
     It is not clear why the plain error exception should be
available for jury instructions but not for interrogatories, which
are formulated together with instructions and often interlock with
them.  The answer cannot be Rule 51, the language of which appears
to forbid any review of jury instructions absent a timely objection
but does not say anything specific about interrogatories.  We see
no reason for a flat rule that an error in interrogatories can never
be reviewable under the plain error doctrine, although that standard
is very difficult to meet, especially in civil cases. 
     The four-part standard for plain error review articulated
in United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (1993), although framed in
a criminal case, is normally followed in civil cases as well.  See,
e.g., Pimentel v. Jacobsen Fishing Co., 102 F.3d 638, 640 (1st Cir.
1996).  If anything, the standard deserves more stringent
application to civil jury instructions given Rule 51's notably
explicit warning of a need to object; unlike objections to evidence,
jury instructions are not spur-of-the-moment matters.  In all
events, under Olano, the court of appeals will consider a forfeited
objection only if an error was committed, if the error was "plain"
(i.e. clear under current law), if the error was prejudicial, and
if review is needed to prevent a miscarriage of justice.  Id. at
733-37. 
     The notion that interrogatory 10 contains an "error" at
all is at best debatable.  If one focuses solely on the words used,
the interrogatory appears to contain as an assumption a factual
assertion clearly disputed by the defendants, i.e., that the saw was
defective, and another disputed by the plaintiff, i.e., that Chute
knew of the defect.  But when read in conjunction with the jury
instructions, arguably the jury should have understood that
interrogatory 10 was conditional--to be reached only if the jury
found a defective design and proximate causation under
interrogatories 8 and 9.
     This is clearer once one reads the instructions and learns
the reason for interrogatory 10.  Its purpose, if the jury found for
the plaintiffs as to defect and causation, was to require the jury
to decide whether the defendants had made out an affirmative defense
set forth in detail in the instructions:  that "the plaintiff in a
warranty action . . . may not recover if . . . after discovering the
product's defect and being made aware of its danger, he nevertheless
proceeded unreasonably to make use of the product and was injured
by it."  Correia v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 446 N.E.2d 1033,
1041 (Mass. 1983).
     The jurors were obviously uncertain whether interrogatory
10 was contingent, but the district court answered this question by
informing them that it was.  We have no reason to think that the
jury then ignored the court's instructions to resolve
interrogatories 8 and 9 first and address 10 only if it found for
the plaintiff on those first questions.  Whether or not in this
context the original interrogatory was "error" at all (still less
"plain error") does not matter:  it is enough that the clarification
removes any reason for thinking that the jury was misled or the
plaintiff prejudiced.
     This exercise demonstrates why courts are so unlikely to
reverse decisions in civil cases based on unpreserved claims of
error in jury instructions or interrogatories.  In an era of crowded
dockets, the idea that the case should be retried because of an
awkwardly-drafted interrogatory when counsel had ample opportunity
to straighten the matter out is insupportable in any other than the
most rare and extreme case.  Although Chute's counsel suggested at
oral argument that he did preserve the objection, our review of the
record has not revealed it, nor does his brief indicate where it
might be found.
     Chute presents two further arguments as to why
interrogatory 10 is defective.  One is even less likely to be
prejudicial error and was also not raised in the district court, so
it is covered by our preceding discussion.  The other claim is that
the affirmative defense of unforeseeable misuse, to which
interrogatory 10 intended to refer, was not accurately stated under
Massachusetts law.  Since the jury did not reach the issue after the
district court's clarification, any such misdescription was patently
harmless.
     Two points remain.  The first is an objection, preserved
at trial, that opinion testimony given by an expert witness lacked
foundation.  We think that allowing the question was within the
district court's discretion, but in any event we regard the answer
as little more than a rephrasing of an earlier scientific answer
that the expert was unquestionably allowed to give.  The second
alleged error, relating to interrogatory 8, was not only forfeited
below but also omitted from Chute's opening brief in this court and
presented for the first time in his reply.  We decline to address
it.  See Nichols v. Cadle Co., 139 F.3d 59, 64 (1st Cir. 1998).
     Affirmed.