Court Opinion

ID: 9486321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:44:23.971356+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:38.745671
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This is a close F.E.L.A. case with a verdict for the defendant after a full trial involving a number of witnesses and competent counsel on both sides of this controversy. I respectfully dissent from the vacating of the jury verdict.
I. MOTION IN LIMINE
Since the majority would reverse and remand, I first would note that I would find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting CSX’s motion in limine with respect to subsequent remedial measures.
II. BURDEN OF PROOF
The principal issue in this appeal involves the district court’s actions and instructions concerning the burden of proof placed upon the plaintiff in this case. During closing arguments, the judge interrupted the plaintiffs counsel to preclude his referring to the preponderance of the evidence standard as being analogous to tipping the scales of justice. Later, during the jury charge, the judge reminded the jury that the standard was not like this scales of justice analogy. The judge also included a proximate cause instruction following the instruction on negligence. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant and answered the first interrogatory, asking whether the defendant had been negligent, in the negative.
The plaintiff filed a notice of appeal and argues that the district court’s jury instructions were erroneous.
The standard of review for jury instructions “is deferential.” Wilkinson v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 920 F.2d 1560, 1569-70 (11th Cir.1991). “On appeal, [the court] ex-aminéis] whether the jury charges, considered as a whole, sufficiently instructed the jury so that the jurors understood the issues and were not misled.” Id. (emphasis added).
During closing arguments, the plaintiffs counsel began to describe his Ghent’s burden in respect to the preponderance of the evidence standard:
It’s like the scales of justice, the way you’re holding the scales. Put all of our evidence on one side and all the other points on the other, and as long as we tip *1482the scales just one little bit in our favor, we’ve succeeded in proving our case.
The district court interrupted to state:
No, no, that’s not a proper argument. It’s the preponderance of the evidence. It’s not a matter of putting to see what weighs slightly more. It’s the preponderance of the evidence. There’s no mathematical formula. Go ahead.
Later, when the district judge charged the jury, he returned to the burden of proof issue:
A preponderance of the evidence means such evidence as when considered and compared with that opposed to it has more convincing force and produces in your minds a belief that what is sought to be proved is more likely true than not true.
Some reference was made during argument, I stopped the argument, that if you put it on scales and it just slightly tilts one way — now that’s not a correct measure of the burden of proof. It must be that it has more convincing force and produces in your minds a belief that what is sought to be true is more likely true than not true.
In other words, to establish a claim by a preponderance of the evidence means just that. To prove that the claim is more likely so than not so.
The district judge also later instructed the jury:
[T]he weight of the evidence is not necessarily determined by the number of witnesses testifying as to any — as to the existence or nonexistence of any fact.
You may find that the testimony of a smaller number of witnesses as to any fact is more credible than the testimony of a larger number of witnesses to the contrary.
The district judge three times instructed the jury that plaintiff had to show what he “sought to be proved” to be “more likely true” or “more likely so” than “not true” or “not so.” He used the standard language to describe this burden as prescribed by Devitt, Blackmar & Wolff in their well-recognized work, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, which was substantially the same as set out in their Third Edition on “preponderance of the evidence.” 3 Devitt, Blackmar & Wolff, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, § 72.01 (4th ed. 1987); see also 7A, 7B, Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions (Civil Cases) and Pattern Jury Instructions of the District Judges Association of the Eleventh Circuit, § 6.1 (1990).
The illustration suggested by the plaintiff’s counsel with respect to “tipping the scales” in his argument should not have been interrupted by the district court. I believe also that it was unfair for the district court to state that it was “not a proper argument.” The district court, however, reminded the jury — twice— that it apply a standard and usual “preponderance of the evidence” requirement. It was, of course, the district court’s responsibility to explain what that meant in its instructions. As stated, I am convinced that the district court’s instruction was not an incorrect statement of the law taken as a whole. The plaintiff’s counsel argued to the jury, when interrupted, that it should “put all of our evidence [presented by his ten witnesses] on one side and all the other points on the other” before going on to refer to “tip[ping] the scales just one little bit.” The district judge perhaps over-reacted, fearing that the jury might follow the erroneous notion that weighing the volume of the plaintiff’s evidence as opposed to the quantum of “points” presented by the defendant’s three witnesses was the standard to be employed.
Having conceded that the interruption, and the later reminder about the basis of interruption was inappropriate, I would find this conduct not to reach the level of reversible trial error. In that regard, viewing the totality of the instructions, I am not left “with a substantial and ineradicable doubt” about whether the jury was misled on what the plaintiff had to prove. See Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 650 F.2d 1365, 1372 (5th Cir.1981). Accordingly, I would not find reversible error in respect to the major issue in the case, the plaintiffs burden of proof. I would not conclude that the jury was misled in this regard.1
*1483In conclusion, then, I would affirm the jury verdict and the actions of the district court in rendering judgment for the defendant.

. I would, therefore, disagree with the plaintiff's argument that the "trial court has instructed the jury to apply two contradictory standards of liability.” Plaintiff's Brief at 3. Somer v. Johnson, 704 F.2d 1473 (11th Cir.1983), is readily distinguishable; in Somer, the district court gave an instruction "expressly condemned" by the Flori*1483da Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions as “confusing, difficult of application and argumentative.” Id. at 1476. Compare Wilson v. Bicycle South, Inc., 915 F.2d 1503 (11th Cir.1990), with respect to a judge’s comments to the jury, and Johnson v. Bryant, 671 F.2d 1276, 1280 (11th Cir.1982), with respect to incorrectness in an instruction of an "isolated clause."