Also known as: clearly erroneous standard · clear error · clear error standard
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A standard of appellate review under which a trial court's factual findings may be overturned only if the reviewing court is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. The reviewing court must give due regard to the trial court's opportunity to judge the witnesses' credibility.
Craig Caldwell sued Cardinal Insurance after a coverage denial. At the bench trial the judge credited the insurer's adjuster and found no bad faith. On appeal Caldwell argued the finding lacked support. The appellate court upheld the finding because the trial judge had observed the witnesses and the record did not produce a firm conviction of error.
Crestview Holdings applied for a permit to operate a group home. The city council denied the application after hearing testimony on neighborhood impact. The district court upheld the denial. On appeal the reviewing court found the district court's factual assessment of safety concerns was not clearly erroneous and affirmed.
In July 1980, respondent Jan Hannah purchased a building at 201 Featherston Street in Cleburne, Texas. Hannah intended to lease the property to Cleburne Living Center, Inc. (CLC) for use as a group home. The home would house thirteen mentally retarded men and women under constant staff supervision. The building contained four bedrooms and two baths, and CLC planned to add a half bath while complying with all applicable state and federal regulations for an Intermediate Care Facility for the Mentally Retarded. The site lay in an R-3 Apartment House District. The city's zoning ordinance permitted apartment houses, boarding houses, hospitals, and nursing homes in that district without special permission. However, the ordinance required a special use permit, renewable annually after a public hearing, for hospitals for the insane or feeble-minded. The city classified the proposed group home as a hospital for the feeble-minded and informed CLC that a permit was required. After a public hearing, the City Council voted three to one to deny the application. CLC and its prospective residents filed suit in federal district court against the city and its officials. They alleged that the ordinance and its application discriminated against the mentally retarded in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The district court upheld the ordinance and the denial. It found that the council's decision was motivated by the residents' mental retardation yet rationally related to legitimate interests such as neighborhood safety and property values. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that mental retardation is a quasi-suspect class and that the ordinance was invalid both facially and as applied. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the equal protection issues raised by the zoning ordinance and its application to the proposed group home.
View caseCaleb Chang was convicted after his lawyer failed to investigate alibi witnesses. The state court found the lawyer's performance adequate. On federal habeas review the district court accepted that finding. The appellate court held the state court's factual determination was not clearly erroneous and denied relief.
In September 1976, respondent David Washington committed a series of crimes over a ten-day period in the Miami area that included three brutal stabbing murders along with torture, kidnapping, severe assaults, attempted murders, attempted extortion, and theft. After his two accomplices were arrested, Washington surrendered to police and gave a lengthy statement confessing to the third criminal episode. The State of Florida indicted him for kidnapping and murder and appointed an experienced criminal lawyer to represent him. Washington waived his right to a jury trial against counsel's advice and pleaded guilty to all charges, including the three capital murder counts. In the plea colloquy he stated that he had committed a string of burglaries but had no significant prior criminal record and that he had been under extreme stress caused by his inability to support his family. Counsel spoke with Washington about his background, contacted his wife and mother by telephone, but did not seek out character witnesses or request a psychiatric examination. At the sentencing hearing before the trial judge, counsel's strategy relied primarily on the plea colloquy to convey remorse and emotional stress and argued that these factors justified sparing Washington the death penalty. Counsel successfully moved to exclude Washington's rap sheet and decided not to request a presentence report because it would have included his criminal history. The trial judge found multiple aggravating circumstances for each murder and no mitigating circumstances, sentencing Washington to death on each of the three murder counts. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentences on direct appeal. Washington sought collateral relief in state court, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel on six grounds including failure to request a psychiatric report, investigate and present character witnesses, and seek a presentence investigation report. He submitted fourteen affidavits from friends, neighbors, and relatives willing to testify and two reports from a psychiatrist and psychologist. The state trial court denied relief without an evidentiary hearing, and the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. Washington then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. After an evidentiary hearing at which trial counsel testified, the District Court denied relief, concluding that although counsel made errors in judgment by failing to investigate mitigating evidence further, no prejudice resulted. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded for application of a new framework it developed for analyzing ineffectiveness claims. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the proper standards for judging claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in a capital sentencing proceeding.
View caseCedar Creek Farms sought rezoning for multifamily housing. The village denied the request. The district court found the denial was not racially motivated. On appeal the reviewing court concluded the district court's factual finding on intent was not clearly erroneous and affirmed the judgment.
In 1971 Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation applied to the Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois, for rezoning of a 15-acre parcel from single-family to multiple-family classification. Using federal financial assistance under section 236 of the National Housing Act, MHDC planned to build 190 clustered townhouse units for low- and moderate-income tenants. The Village denied the rezoning request. MHDC, joined by other plaintiffs, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging that the denial was racially discriminatory and violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Arlington Heights is a suburb of Chicago located about 26 miles northwest of the downtown Loop. Most land in the Village is zoned for detached single-family homes. The Clerics of St. Viator own an 80-acre parcel just east of the center of Arlington Heights that includes a high school, a novitiate building, and vacant land. Since 1959 all land surrounding the Viatorian property has been zoned R-3 for single-family use with relatively small minimum lot-size requirements. In 1970 MHDC entered into a 99-year lease and accompanying agreement of sale covering a 15-acre site in the southeast corner of the Viatorian property. The agreement set a bargain purchase price of $300,000 with the sale contingent upon securing zoning clearances and section 236 housing assistance. MHDC's plans for the Lincoln Green project called for 20 two-story buildings containing 190 units with a mix of one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom configurations and a large portion of the site left open. The development did not conform to the Village zoning ordinance and required rezoning to the R-5 multiple-family classification. MHDC filed a petition for rezoning with the Village Plan Commission accompanied by supporting materials that included an affirmative marketing plan designed to assure racial integration. MHDC consulted with Village staff and incorporated every recommended change into the plans. During the spring of 1971 the Plan Commission considered the proposal at three public meetings that drew large crowds. Opponents focused on the zoning aspects. They argued that the area had always been single-family. They also argued that the buffer policy adopted in 1962 called for R-5 zoning primarily to serve as a buffer between single-family development and commercial or manufacturing districts. At the close of the third meeting the Plan Commission recommended denial. On September 28, 1971, the Village Board denied the rezoning by a 6-1 vote. In June 1972 MHDC and three Black individuals filed suit against the Village. A second nonprofit corporation and an individual of Mexican-American descent intervened. After a bench trial the District Court entered judgment for the Village in 1974. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed in 1975. The Supreme Court granted the Village's petition for certiorari in 1975.
View caseCrown Pharmaceuticals published an article that quoted extensively from a memoir. The district court found the use was not fair. On appeal the reviewing court examined the factual findings on market effect and held they were not clearly erroneous, so the judgment stood.
In February 1977, shortly after leaving the White House, former President Gerald R. Ford contracted with Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., and Reader's Digest Association, Inc., to publish his memoirs. The agreement provided Harper & Row and Reader's Digest the exclusive right to license prepublication excerpts known as first serial rights. Harper & Row paid Ford $25,000 upon signing and another $25,000 upon delivery of the manuscript, while the Government supplied $25,000 for researchers plus staff and access to White House files and tapes. The completed 460-page manuscript included roughly 200 pages on Ford's decision to pardon Richard Nixon. In late 1978, Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation, learned from an undisclosed source that the manuscript was in California. The source, described as a former Ford aide, supplied a copy to The Nation for $5,000. Navasky prepared a 2,250-word article titled "The Ford Memoirs — Behind the Nixon Pardon" that appeared in the April 3, 1979, issue. The article contained approximately 300 words of verbatim quotations from the manuscript, focused on the Nixon pardon chapters, and was published on the eve of the scheduled Time magazine serialization. Harper & Row had separately licensed first serial rights to Time magazine for $25,000, with $12,500 paid in advance and the balance due upon publication of a 7,500-word excerpt timed for one week before the hardcover book release. Time retained the right to renegotiate the second payment if any material appeared earlier. After The Nation article ran, Time canceled the remaining payment and the serialization. Harper & Row and Reader's Digest then sued Nation Enterprises in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement among other claims. Following a six-day bench trial, the district court found that the Ford manuscript was protected by copyright at the time of The Nation's publication and that the use of the material was not fair use. The court awarded Harper & Row $12,500 in actual damages. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, holding that The Nation's use qualified as fair use. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseClaire Campbell was harmed after a therapist failed to warn her of a patient's threats. The trial court found the therapist had no duty. On appeal the reviewing court determined the factual finding on foreseeability was not clearly erroneous and affirmed the dismissal.
On October 27, 1969, Prosenjit Poddar killed Tatiana Tarasoff. Two months earlier, Poddar, a voluntary outpatient receiving therapy at Cowell Memorial Hospital at the University of California at Berkeley, confided his intention to kill an unnamed girl, readily identifiable as Tatiana, to his therapist Dr. Lawrence Moore. Moore, with the concurrence of Dr. Gold who had initially examined Poddar and Dr. Yandell, assistant to the director of the department of psychiatry, decided that Poddar should be committed for observation in a mental hospital. Moore orally notified Officers Atkinson and Teel of the campus police that he would request commitment. He then sent a letter to Police Chief William Beall requesting assistance in securing Poddar's confinement. Officers Atkinson, Brownrigg, and Halleran took Poddar into custody but released him after determining he was rational on his promise to stay away from Tatiana. Dr. Harvey Powelson, director of the department of psychiatry at Cowell Memorial Hospital, then asked the police to return Moore's letter, directed that all copies of the letter and notes Moore had taken as therapist be destroyed, and ordered no action to place Poddar in a 72-hour treatment and evaluation facility. Poddar persuaded Tatiana's brother to share an apartment with him near Tatiana's residence. Shortly after her return from spending the summer in Brazil, Poddar went to her residence and killed her. Plaintiffs, Tatiana's mother and father, filed separate but virtually identical second amended complaints against the therapists Moore, Powelson, Gold, and Yandell, the police defendants Atkinson, Beall, Brownrigg, Halleran, and Teel, and the Regents of the University of California as their employer. The first cause of action alleged failure to detain a dangerous patient. The second cause of action alleged failure to warn on a dangerous patient. The third cause of action sought punitive damages against Powelson for abandonment of a dangerous patient. The fourth cause of action alleged breach of primary duty to patient and the public. The superior court sustained defendants' demurrers to the second amended complaints without leave to amend. The case reached the Supreme Court of California on appeal from the judgment of the superior court.
View caseAn appellate court may reverse only when it is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed after reviewing the entire record. The rule requires giving due regard to the trial court's credibility determinations.
Supporting sources
No. A party may later question the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the findings whether or not the party requested findings or objected to them.
The court must find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately so that the appellate court can apply the clearly erroneous standard to the factual findings.
Questions of law receive de novo review with no deference to the trial court. Factual findings in bench trials receive deference and are overturned only if clearly erroneous.