Related Motions Compared

Related Motions Compared

Rule 50(a) has two close relatives, and each is easy to mistake for it. Summary judgment keeps the test and moves it earlier in the case. Judgment under Rule 52(c) arrives during trial, as Rule 50(a) does, but it arrives without a jury, and the jury’s absence changes the standard. Identify which variable moved in each pair, and the doctrine sorts itself out.

Rule 50(a)(2) explains why those two variables matter. It allows the motion at any time before the case is submitted to the jury,¹ so the rule presupposes a jury that is about to decide the facts. Move the motion before trial, and it needs a different record. Remove the jury, and it needs a different standard.

Summary Judgment: Same Test, Earlier Record

Rule 50(a)(1) lets a court resolve an issue against a party and grant judgment on any claim or defense that, under the controlling law, can be maintained or defeated only with a favorable finding on that issue.² Summary judgment under Rule 56 reaches for the same kind of ruling before trial, and the Supreme Court has agreed that the summary judgment standard mirrors the directed-verdict standard under Rule 50(a). The judge must direct a verdict if, under the governing law, there can be but one reasonable conclusion, and may not direct one if reasonable minds could differ about the import of the evidence.³ The Court then compressed the shared inquiry into one question. Does the evidence present a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury, or is it so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law?⁴

Celotex Corp. v. Catrett shows the shared question at work. The plaintiff opposed summary judgment with a showing of exposure to the defendant’s asbestos products, and the Court of Appeals declined to ask whether that showing, if reduced to admissible evidence, would be enough to carry the plaintiff’s burden of proof at trial.⁵ That unasked question is the one summary judgment poses: could the nonmovant prove its case at trial on what it has shown?

Because the legal question is shared, two variables separate the motions: when each is decided and what the judge has in hand. The Court called the primary difference procedural: “summary judgment motions are usually made before trial and decided on documentary evidence, while directed verdict motions are made at trial and decided on the evidence that has been admitted.”⁶ A summary judgment record usually consists of affidavits and other documentary evidence. The opposing party may submit her own materials but has no cross-examination, and the motion may come early, before the parties have exhaustively developed their cases.⁷ A Rule 50(a) record consists of what has been admitted in the courtroom. The motion comes after the opponent has presented its case but before submission to the jury,⁸ and the court may grant it only once the opponent has been fully heard on the issue.⁹

Summary judgment is one of four motions that can dispose of a case as a matter of law on what we might call established facts. The four differ primarily in timing, and therefore in how the facts are established to furnish the record for decision.¹⁰ In the order in which they arise:

1. Rule 12(b)(6) is decided on the facts alleged in the complaint.
2. Rule 12(c) is decided on the facts alleged in the complaint and the answer.
3. Rule 56 is decided on the facts in the movant’s and the non-movant’s materials, which in most cases means affidavits and other documentary evidence.¹¹
4. Rule 50(a) is decided on the trial record, whether the motion comes after the opponent’s case or after the full record is in.¹²

That progression explains the caution courts show before trial. A paper record shows what each side says it can prove, but no one has tested it by examination. On summary judgment the court therefore asks only whether a genuine dispute of material fact exists. It decides no dispute, weighs no evidence, assesses no credibility, and resolves doubts in favor of the non-moving party.¹³ At trial the judge likewise views the evidence in the light most favorable to the opponent of the Rule 50(a) motion.¹⁴ Both stages draw the same line, which lets a court screen a record without replacing the jury: the court decides whether facts could be established on the record, and the jury decides whether they have been.¹⁵ What differs is how much of the record exists when the court draws the line.

Denying a Rule 50(a) motion does not close the question. The court is considered to have submitted the action to the jury subject to its later deciding the legal questions the motion raised, and it may reassess the sufficiency of the evidence after the verdict.¹⁶ The trial judge’s view of legal sufficiency therefore survives the jury’s decision, as the discussion of renewal under Rule 50(b) showed.

Can a defendant who loses a summary judgment motion still win judgment as a matter of law on the same issue? Yes, as the following facts show.

The judge may grant the motion. The standard is unchanged, but the record is not: the documentary materials showed a dispute, and the testimony the jury would hear shows none. The earlier denial does not bind the court at trial, and Desmond needs no new evidence, because the gap lies in the proof on which Penny bears the burden of production. It is not unusual for a court to deny summary judgment and later grant judgment as a matter of law to the same party.¹⁷

Judges treat the two motions less evenly than the shared standard suggests. On summary judgment the court gives the benefit of the doubt to a party who says it can prove a doubtful proposition at trial (see Kim v. Coppin State College). By the time of a Rule 50(a) motion, the judge has watched those claims tested in open court, and a proposition that survived on paper may fail in the courtroom. The delay costs the movant little. Even when the judge ultimately takes the case from the jury, the forbearance gives the parties the fullest opportunity to satisfy their burden of production, and thus to reach the jury, in close cases.¹⁸

Rule 50(a)(2) invites one tempting error: reading its timing sentence as an all-purpose permission slip. The two paragraphs of Rule 50(a) work together. Paragraph (1) sets the standards under which a court may grant judgment as a matter of law, and paragraph (2) says when a party may move, which is any time until the case goes to the jury. The timing sentence supplements the standard. It does not eliminate the requirement that a party be “fully heard” on an issue before judgment is granted.¹⁹ An identical test therefore does not make the motions interchangeable. A court cannot grant Rule 50(a) relief before the opponent has presented its case, and a defendant who wants an early ruling on the proof must use a motion built for that stage: Rule 12(b)(6), Rule 12(c), or Rule 56.²⁰

Bench Trial Counterpart: Rule 52(c)

Rule 50 speaks in terms of a jury: the motion may be made until the case is submitted to the jury.²² A bench trial has no submission and no verdict, so the device needs a counterpart. Until 1991, a Rule 41(b) motion to dismiss for insufficiency of the evidence filled that role in nonjury cases. The relevant motion now, which either party may make, is judgment as a matter of law under Rule 52(c), judgment on partial findings.²³ It is available during trial, once the judge has heard sufficient evidence to make dispositive findings and all parties have been fully heard on the issue.²⁴ The fully-heard condition carries over from Rule 50(a) and protects the same interest: a party should not lose an issue before it has presented its proof on that issue. What changes is how the judge may look at the record once the condition is met.

In a jury case the judge must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the party against whom the motion is directed, in order to prevent any infringement on the function of the jury. No such limitation applies in a nonjury case.²⁵ The limitation follows its reason. Jurors decide which witnesses to believe and what the evidence proves, so a judge who answered those questions on a Rule 50 motion would take over the jury’s work. The standard keeps the judge on the law side of the line: a court may direct a verdict only if reasonable persons could not differ about the result.²⁶ When the judge is also the fact-finder, no jury function remains to protect, and the judge may weigh the evidence in deciding whether a party has carried its burden.

The only fact that moved the answer is the identity of the fact-finder. The doubts about the witnesses were the same in both courtrooms. They decide the case where the judge is the fact-finder and decide nothing where a jury sits. The same difference explains the second feature of the bench-trial rule. A judge who decides a case on a motion or at the close of the evidence must find the facts specially and state the conclusions of law separately, though both may appear in an opinion.²⁷ The findings give the appellate court a clear understanding of the basis for the decision, fix what was decided for purposes of claim and issue preclusion, and call for care in ascertaining the facts.²⁸ Where the judge does the weighing, the findings are what make the weighing reviewable.

Two checks apply on an exam. “Directed verdict” is the older name for the Rule 50(a) motion, which the 1991 amendment recast as judgment as a matter of law,²⁹ and the motion belongs to jury trials. A stem that applies the favorable-to-the-non-movant rule to a bench trial is using the wrong standard, because the nonjury motion arises under Rule 52(c) and carries no such limit. A stem in which a judge presiding over a jury trial grants a Rule 50(a) motion because the plaintiff’s witnesses seemed unpersuasive describes an error, because the court has taken a credibility decision from the jury.