Court Opinion

ID: 9471372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:30:48.964544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:22.885826
License: Public Domain

KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the district court’s jury instructions require the granting of a new trial. Although I agree that the instruction referring to the standards of responsible publishers is legally incorrect, I do not believe that in light of Liberty Lobby’s failure to object to the instruction at trial it amounts to reversible error.
Fed.R.Civ.P. 51 states that:
*652No party may assign as error the giving or the failure to give an instruction unless he objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter to which he objects and the grounds of his objection....
This circuit has strictly limited the creation of exceptions to the rule: “It is true that even absent [an] objection [pursuant to F.R. Civ.P. 51] ‘an appellate court will notice error so fundamental as to result in a miscarriage of justice,’ but ‘that power will only be exercised in exceptional cases.’ ” Patton v. Archer, 590 F.2d 1319, 1322 (5th Cir.1979) (quoting, Delancey v. Motichek Towing Service, Inc., 427 F.2d 897, 901 (5th Cir.1970)).1 See also, Barnett v. Housing Authority of City of Atlanta, 707 F.2d 1571, 1580 (11th Cir.1983). To determine if the challenged instruction resulted in a miscarriage of justice, we must “consider the charge as a whole from the standpoint of the jury, in view of the allegations made, the evidence presented and the arguments of counsel.” Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 650 F.2d 1365 (5th Cir.1981).
I am not convinced upon reviewing the jury instructions and counsels’ arguments that this is an “exceptional case” to be exempted from Rule 51’s stringent requirements. The disputed instruction was briefly stated only once during the entire charge. More importantly, it was immediately followed by a detailed explanation of the specific elements that the plaintiff had to prove, one of which was actual malice. The judge properly instructed at length what constituted actual malice, emphasizing the importance of the publisher’s mental state and cautioning that negligent failure to investigate or verify information was insufficient by itself to establish malice. Moreover, both plaintiff and defendant’s counsel relied on the proper legal definition of actual malice in their closing arguments, stressing the relevancy of the publisher’s mental state.2 Compare, Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc., supra (plaintiff’s counsel argued faulty instruction to the jury as “the heart” of his case).
The responsible publisher instruction standing alone might have led the jury to believe that the defendant’s state of mind was irrelevant. A review of the entire charge, however, with its subsequent emphasis on the publisher’s mental state and its detailed explanation of actual malice does not create such “a substantial and ineradicable doubt as to whether the jury was properly guided in its deliberations,” Miller v. Universal City Studios, supra at 1372, that the inclusion of the challenged instruction can be said to have constituted fundamental error. See Barnett v. Housing Authority City of Atlanta, supra; F.R. Civ.P. 51.3 Accordingly, I would affirm the district court’s judgment.

. This court has adopted as binding precedent Fifth Circuit cases decided prior to October 1, 1981. Bonner v. City of Prichard, 661 F.2d 1206 (11th Cir.1981) (en banc).

. The defendant’s attorney at several points during his closing argument stressed the importance of the defendant’s mental state, telling the jury that “[t]he question is what was in the mind of the author and publisher when they printed the article.” Similarly, the plaintiff’s attorney in rebuttal focused on how they had demonstrated that the defendant had acted either with knowledge that the article was false or with reckless disregard of its truthfulness, noting that “actual malice, according to the law, refers to the mental state of Liberty Lobby •....” Neither closing argument suggested that the defendant’s mental state was irrelevant to a finding of actual malice.

. I express no opinion as to whether the challenged instruction would warrant reversal if Liberty Lobby had properly objected to it at trial. It is important to note, however, the special danger of granting new trials in cases where no objection to an erroneous instruction was made at trial: a party can place itself in a “no-lose” situation of either receiving a favorable verdict or, if the outcome is unfavorable, obtaining a new trial on appeal.