Court Opinion

ID: 9474136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:48:57.309643+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:55.331408
License: Public Domain

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the decision to affirm the district court’s judgment. However, because I conclude that the jury’s original verdict was unambiguous and was consistent with the district court’s ultimate judgment, I find it unnecessary to reach the issues discussed by the majority.
The court instructed the jury that the parties had stipulated that Arnebergh owed Hutton an account balance of $336,614. The court’s instructions provided that: “If you find that Roger Arnebergh has failed to establish all of the facts necessary to prove any of his several defenses or claims by a preponderance of the evidence, then you should render your verdict for that amount [$336,614] against the defendant Roger Arnebergh.”
In its special verdict, the jury found that Hutton had breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing in connection with Arnebergh’s silver futures contracts, but not with his spot silver contracts. It explicitly found that 50% of the parties’ combined negligence in their transactions was attributable to Hutton, and 50% was attributable to Arnebergh.
In light of the instructions the jury was given and the answers it provided on the special verdict form, the jury’s original verdict made sense only as embodied in the district court’s judgment. The jury awarded an identical amount of compensatory damages, $168,307, to Hutton and Arne-bergh; this amount was exactly one-half of the stipulated account balance. Arnebergh maintains that the jury’s intent was for the two compensatory damage awards to cancel one another out, and for Arnebergh to be left with the $100,000 punitive-damage award owed by Hutton. Yet such a verdict would have left Hutton recovering nothing out of Arnebergh’s $336,614 account balance, despite the jury’s conclusion that Hutton had breached its contractual duties in only one out of the two sets of contracts between the parties, and that Arnebergh was 50% responsible for the parties’ combined negligence.
The only possible interpretation of the jury’s verdict that is consistent with the facts of this case and the answers provided on the special verdict form is that the jury intended to “split the difference” on Arne-bergh’s outstanding account balance, awarding Arnebergh a $168,307 reduction in the amount he owed to Hutton, and awarding Hutton a $168,307 net recovery from Arnebergh. The punitive damages were to be subtracted from Hutton’s net recovery.
The trial judge should not have found it necessary to reconvene or question the jury. The fact that he did so and the jury required less than five minutes to confirm the meaning of its original verdict demonstrates how unambiguous that verdict was.
I therefore agree that the district court’s judgment should be affirmed.1

. I do not agree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that Arnebergh waived his right to challenge the district court's decision to reconvene the jury under Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b). Arnebergh explicitly preserved two objections to the jury interview in his pleading of March 1, 1983 and the parties’ stipulation of March 2, 1983: (1) that the original verdict *1066unambiguously indicated that he was entitled to a net recovery of $100,000; and (2) that any interview of the jury would violate Rule 606(b). I do not agree with the majority that Arnebergh somehow waived his Rule 606(b) objection because he failed to move for a new trial.