Post-Verdict Rulings

Post-Verdict Rulings

A party who loses a jury verdict rarely asks for only one thing. The loser who believes the proof was legally insufficient renews the motion for judgment as a matter of law, but the same loser may also believe that the verdict runs against the weight of the evidence or that error at trial infected the result. Each belief supports a different request, and the loser usually makes both.¹

The first request invokes the power Rule 50(a)(1) describes. When the court finds that a reasonable jury would lack a legally sufficient evidentiary basis on an issue, it may resolve that issue against the party and grant judgment as a matter of law on any claim or defense that, under the controlling law, can be maintained or defeated only with a favorable finding on that issue.² The renewed motion builds on a Rule 50(a) motion, which may be made at any time before the case is submitted to the jury and must specify the judgment sought and the law and facts that entitle the movant to it.³ The second request, for a new trial, seeks a different remedy under a different standard: another jury rather than an end to the case.

Pairing the requests creates a problem on appeal. Suppose the judge grants the renewed motion and the verdict winner appeals. If the court of appeals finds the evidence sufficient, it still cannot say whether the verdict should stand or the case should be tried again, because a new trial poses a different question from sufficiency. Unless the trial judge has already ruled on the new trial request, the court of appeals must remand for a belated ruling.⁴ Rule 50 responds twice. It requires the trial judge to rule conditionally on the new trial request, and it gives the verdict winner a place to press its own objections to the trial, so that one appeal can resolve the whole case. The new trial motion comes first, because the later procedures make sense only once its relationship to judgment as a matter of law is clear.

Joining a New Trial Motion

When the court does not grant a Rule 50(a) motion, it is considered to have submitted the action to the jury, and after the verdict the loser may renew the motion.⁵ Rule 50(b) expressly allows the loser to pair the renewed motion with an alternative request for a new trial.⁶ The preceding subsections treated the renewed motion alone. Here it stands beside the new trial motion, because a lawyer who treats the two as interchangeable will misjudge which remedy a given defect supports.

Judgment as a matter of law tests the sufficiency of the evidence by the reasonable-jury standard. The judge does not weigh the evidence or judge the credibility of witnesses, and the judge construes all reasonable doubts against the movant. A grant takes the case from the jury and decides it.⁷ A new trial motion asks a different question. It does not turn on sufficiency; it argues that the verdict goes against the weight of the evidence, that the damages are excessive, or that the trial was unfair. On that question the judge may weigh the evidence and assess credibility and need not resolve doubts against the movant. A grant rejects the first verdict without deciding the case, so the parties try it again before a new jury.⁸

The difference in remedy explains the difference in the judge's freedom. Judgment as a matter of law takes the case from the jury, so it requires a record on which no reasonable jury could have found for the verdict winner. A new trial for a weight-of-the-evidence error does not deny the verdict winner a jury; it only makes the winner try the case again before a new one, and that is the theory on which the power is reconciled with the Seventh Amendment.⁹

The grounds for a new trial are correspondingly broader. Rule 59 does not list them; it reaches any reason for which federal courts have historically granted new trials in actions at law. The usual ones are that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence, that the damages are excessive, or that the trial was otherwise unfair, including through substantial errors in admitting or rejecting evidence.¹⁰ Deciding whether a verdict goes against the great weight of the evidence is delicate work. It requires balancing evidence, often live testimony that only the trial judge has had a full opportunity to observe, which is why appellate judges rarely second-guess a new trial grant on that ground.¹¹

A pedestrian case shows the two remedies pulling apart.

Chapman's testimony is some evidence of injury, so the judge may not take the case from the jury, and on a motion for judgment the judge may not weigh that testimony or discount her credibility.¹³ Had she offered nothing on injury, judgment on that element would have been the cure. On this record the defect is a verdict that outruns the proof, an excessive-damages and weight-of-the-evidence problem, and the cure is another jury.¹⁴

A different defect calls for the same remedy.

Trivedi shows how little a credibility contest supports either remedy. The jury returned verdicts for the plaintiff on retaliation and failure-to-promote claims after a swearing contest in which the defendant denied everything. The court refused judgment as a matter of law, because a reasonable jury could find that the plaintiff won the contest, and the verdict was not the product of sheer surmise or conjecture.¹⁶ The defendant had also moved for a new trial as an “even if” fallback: even if the evidence sufficed, the verdict shocked the court's conscience.¹⁷ Courts differ on how far that fallback reaches. At one extreme, a decision holds that a new trial ordinarily should not be granted on weight grounds when the evidence conflicted and the jury might have found for either party. Taken literally, that view would end weight-based new trials altogether, since a verdict no reasonable jury could reach calls for judgment instead.¹⁸

The two motions also differ in what must precede them. The renewed motion cannot widen the grounds of the pre-verdict motion, because that motion exists to alert the court and the opponent to a failure of proof and to let the opponent fill the evidentiary gap if it can.¹⁹ A loser who never made a Rule 50(a) motion therefore has nothing to renew. A new trial motion carries no comparable prerequisite. No rule requires a party to move for a new trial before submission, Rule 59 does not speak of a “renewed” motion, and it would make no sense to argue before the verdict that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence.²⁰ The loser who skipped the earlier motion has lost the route to judgment but may still ask the judge to vacate the verdict, which yields another jury and no judgment.

In place of a prior-motion requirement, the new trial motion carries a short deadline. Such motions are generally governed by strict timing provisions measured from entry of judgment, and failure to move within the period is fatal.²¹ The renewed motion for judgment runs on its own 28 days after entry of judgment.²² Because the period runs from entry of judgment, waiting for a ruling on one motion does not extend the time for the other. A defendant who renews the motion on time, waits past the twenty-eighth day for a ruling, and only then seeks a new trial over an evidentiary error is too late, and the judge cannot rescue the defendant by acting on the court's own initiative, because that power also expires 28 days after entry of judgment.²³ That risk is the practical reason the requests are filed together.

Joining the motions also gives the court a choice of remedy. Even when proper motions have been made and the case is appropriate for judgment, the court is not required to enter it. It may order a new trial instead if that, rather than a final termination of the case, would better serve the ends of justice.²⁴ A new trial keeps a jury in the case, because another jury hears it.²⁵

The safe course in a jury case follows from all of this. The loser moves for judgment as a matter of law before the verdict, and after an adverse verdict renews that motion and asks for a new trial in the alternative, all within the 28 days. The alternative request works as an “even if” fallback: even if the court finds the evidence sufficient and denies judgment, the verdict should still be set aside on weight or process grounds.²⁶ What the court must do when it grants the renewed motion with that request pending is the subject of the next subsection.

Conditional Rulings Under Rule 50(c)

When a renewed motion succeeds, the jury's verdict is displaced and judgment goes to the loser. That loser has usually joined a request for a new trial, and Rule 50(c) tells the judge what to do with it. The court must “conditionally rule on any motion for new trial by determining whether a new trial should be granted if the judgment is later vacated or reversed.”³⁰ The ruling is conditional because it operates only if the judgment for the movant does not survive appeal.

At first the requirement looks like wasted effort. A judge who has just ended the case has no apparent reason to decide whether it should be tried again, since the movant has everything it asked for. The reason appears on appeal. Sufficiency asks whether the evidence was legally enough; a new trial asks whether the verdict goes against the weight of the evidence or came from a flawed trial. An appellate court that reverses the judgment and holds the evidence sufficient has therefore not decided whether the verdict should stand. The trial judge, who heard all the evidence, is better placed to decide, so without a conditional ruling the court of appeals would have to remand for a belated ruling.³¹ With one, the court of appeals can address both issues at once.³²

The conditional ruling also fixes what happens after reversal. If the judgment is reversed and the new trial was conditionally granted, the new trial proceeds unless the court of appeals orders otherwise. If the new trial was conditionally denied, the movant can assert that denial as error on its appeal.³³

The judgment for Alcott cannot stand, but the conditional ruling has already answered what comes next, and the court of appeals reviews it in the same appeal. Courts of appeals review new trial grants, rather gingerly, for abuse of discretion.³⁵ If the court finds none, it upholds the grant and the case is retried. Had the judge conditionally denied the new trial, Alcott could have asserted that denial as error in the same appeal.

The value of the ruling shows most clearly if the judge had decided only the renewed motion. Reversal would then leave the court of appeals with nothing to review on the new trial question, and the case would have to return to the trial court for the belated ruling before it could end.³⁶ Deciding both questions at the outset avoids that detour.

The first step shows why the conditional ruling is harmless to the judgment winner. Suppose the loser asked for a new trial because the judge mistakenly excluded defense evidence, and the judge granted judgment and conditionally granted the new trial. If the court of appeals agrees that the plaintiff's case was too weak to support a verdict, the exclusion error is harmless, because the defendant prevailed without the excluded evidence.

Verdict Winner's Protections

Rule 50(c) governs the party who lost the verdict and won judgment. Rules 50(d) and 50(e) serve the other side of that motion: each gives a verdict winner whose verdict is displaced a place to argue that the trial was flawed and that a new trial, not judgment against it, is the right remedy.⁴¹

A verdict winner needs these protections because it has no reason to ask for a new trial while the verdict stands. It already holds the result it wanted, and a request for a new trial would invite the court to undo that result.⁴² The need appears only when the verdict is taken away. The winner may then have complaints about the trial that it never had cause to press, since the first trial may have been unfair in one way or another.⁴³

Rule 50(d) covers the case in which the trial court grants judgment as a matter of law against the party who won the verdict. That party may move for a new trial on its objections to the trial within 28 days after entry of the judgment for the opposing party.⁴⁴ The period runs from that judgment because, until it displaced the verdict, the winner had nothing to attack.

Had Milne waited past the 28 days, the failure to move within the period would have been fatal.⁴⁵ The relief is also limited. A new trial gives the winner a second jury; it does not restore the first verdict.

Rule 50(e) covers the other way a verdict winner can lose a verdict, which is on appeal. When the trial court denies the motion for judgment, the verdict stands and the loser appeals. The winner still has no reason to seek a new trial, but the appeal puts the verdict at risk, because the court of appeals may conclude that the motion should have been granted. Rule 50(e) therefore lets the winner, as appellee, “assert grounds entitling it to a new trial should the appellate court conclude that the trial court erred in denying the motion.”⁴⁶ If the court of appeals does so conclude, it may order a new trial and direct entry of judgment, or it may send the new trial question back to the trial court. The trial judge, who was present, is often better able to appraise the harm of an error than appellate judges who have only the cold written record.⁴⁷

The appellate-review section below returns to what the loser must have done earlier to preserve the sufficiency challenge. For now, the provisions fit together simply. The verdict loser has the conditional ruling under Rule 50(c), and the verdict winner has Rules 50(d) and 50(e), so each side has a place for its trial-error arguments within the same proceeding that decides the motion.