Court Opinion

ID: 9481154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:10:09.140356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:08.238251
License: Public Domain

SELYA, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I join in all of Judge Bownes’ well-reasoned opinion except for Part 11(a). The majority rules today that postjudgment interest on the jury’s eventual award of damages should accrue from the date of the judgment entered after the first trial, rather than from the date of the judgment entered after the retrial. See ante at 11-16. Were we writing on a clean slate, entitled to weigh the equities, I would likely agree. But, the slate is too well inscribed.
This is not a case where “an original judgment [was] upheld for the most part but modified on remand,” ante at 13;5 rather, this is a case where we vacated the original judgment and ordered “a new trial on the question of damages.” Cordero v. De Jesus-Mendez, 867 F.2d 1, 7 (1st Cir.1989). In such a situation, I think the case is governed by the Court’s recent interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1961 (1982 ed.) and its opinion in Kaiser Alum. & Chem. Corp. v. Bonjorno, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 1570, 108 L.Ed.2d 842 (1990):
Where the judgment on damages was not supported by the evidence, the damages have not been ‘ascertained’ in any meaningful way. It would be counterintuitive, to say the least, to believe that Congress intended postjudgment interest to be calculated from such a judgment.
Id. at 1576. Although I share the hope that Kaiser will not be read too expansively, see id. at 1594-95 (White, J., dissenting), its ratio decidendi comfortably embraces the case at hand. We must obey the Court; and such obedience transforms here into plain duty. The postjudgment interest clock began to tick only on the date the second judgment was entered.
I respectfully dissent from Part 11(a) of the majority’s opinion.

. Were that the case, I would agree with the majority’s selected date.