Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig , 351 F.3d 547 ( 2003 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
Nos. 02-1139, 02-1340, 02-1465
LUIS A. ACEVEDO-GARCIA, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees/Cross-Appellants,
v.
ROBERTO VERA MONROIG, Individually and as Mayor of Adjuntas;
MUNICIPALITY OF ADJUNTAS; IRMA M. GONZALEZ DELGADO, Individually
and as Personnel Director of Adjuntas,
Defendants-Appellants/Cross-Appellees.
APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Jaime Pieras, Jr., U.S. Senior District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Chief Judge,
Bownes, Senior Circuit Judge,
and Lipez, Circuit Judge.
Johanna M. Emmanuelli-Huertas, with whom Jorge Martinez
Luciano and Law Offices of Pedro A. Ortiz Alvarez were on brief for
the Municipality of Adjuntas.
Luis Villares Sarmiento, with whom Yahaida Zabala, and
Sanchez, Betances & Sifre, were on brief for appellants/cross-
appellees Vera and Gonzalez in their individual capacities.
Gael Mahony, with whom Israel Roldan-Gonzalez, Stuart Svonkin,
Erica Templeton, Michael E. Liftik, and Hill & Barlow were on brief
for appellees/cross-appellants.
August 21, 2003
LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. This complex political
discrimination case was filed by eighty-two plaintiffs terminated
from career employment positions with the municipality of Adjuntas
in Puerto Rico. The district court severed the plaintiffs into
four groups -- three groups of twenty and one group of twenty-two
-- and the claims of the first twenty plaintiffs are now before us
on defendants' appeal from a substantial verdict for plaintiffs.
Although this case raises many familiar issues, it also presents
some unusual questions arising from the court's initial severance
of the plaintiffs, and its later decision to apply non-mutual
offensive collateral estoppel to the three remaining pieces of the
severed litigation. We vacate the court's collateral estoppel
order, and affirm in all other respects.
I.
On November 12, 1997, eighty-two current and former
employees of the municipality of Adjuntas brought suit under 42
U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of their First, Fifth and
Fourteenth Amendment rights arising from a massive layoff of
municipal employees in the aftermath of the November 1996 mayoral
election. Every claimant was fired from a "career position" (akin
to a civil service job), as opposed to a "trust position"
(political appointment), temporary or transitory post, or
"contract" (fixed term) job. The plaintiffs named three defendants
in the suit -- Roberto Vera Monroig ("Vera"), the mayor of Adjuntas
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(sued in both his individual and official capacities); Irma
Gonzalez, Adjunta's Director of Human Resources (sued in both her
individual and official capacities); and the municipality of
Adjuntas.1
On November 23, 1998, the district court issued an order
and opinion denying absolute and/or qualified immunity to Mayor
Vera and Gonzalez in their individual capacities, and granting in
part and denying in part the defendants' motion for summary
judgment. See Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 30 F. Supp. 2d 141(D.P.R. 1998) ("Acevedo I"). In an opinion published February 17,
2000, we affirmed the district court's order in all respects,
ruling inter alia that defendants could not claim the protection of
1
Defendants do not challenge the legal availability of
municipal liability in this case. In Cordero v. De Jesus-Mendez,
867 F.2d 1 (1st Cir. 1989), we acknowledged the Supreme Court's
holding in Pembaur v. City of Cincinnati, 475 U.S. 469 (1986) that
"municipality liability under § 1983 attaches where . . . a
deliberate choice to follow a course of action is made from among
various alternatives by the official or officials responsible for
establishing final policy with respect to the subject matter in
question." Id. at 483-84 (emphasis added). The Cordero court
subsequently noted that mayors in Puerto Rico are the government
officials ultimately responsible for the employment decisions of
the municipality:
Under Puerto Rico law, one of the express
powers given to mayors of municipalities is:
"To appoint all the officials and employees of
the municipal executive branch, and remove
them from office whenever necessary for the
good of the service, pursuant to the
procedures provided herein." P.R. Laws Ann.
tit. 21, ch. 155 § 3002(15) (1980).
Id. at 7. Hence, Defendant Vera's employment decisions ipso facto
"constituted the official policy of the municipality." Id.
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absolute immunity, and that we lacked jurisdiction to review the
district court's rulings on qualified immunity and municipal
liability. See Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 204 F.3d 1 (1st
Cir. 2000) ("Acevedo II").
Our decision in Acevedo II cleared the remaining
roadblocks to trial, and the district court undertook the
formidable logistical task of arranging to try the multitude of
political discrimination, political harassment, and due process
claims alleged by the eighty-two individual plaintiffs.2 To this
end, the court issued an order on October 11, 2001, severing the
case into four separate trials of twenty, twenty, twenty, and
twenty-two plaintiffs, respectively. To configure the first group
of twenty plaintiffs, the order directed each side to choose six
plaintiffs with political discrimination and due process claims
only (for a total of twelve), and four plaintiffs prosecuting
political discrimination, due process and political harassment
claims (for a total of eight).
The trial for this first group began October 12, 2001,
and lasted twenty-three days. At the conclusion of the
proceedings, the jury returned a verdict awarding each plaintiff a
2
All eighty-two plaintiffs alleged political discrimination
and due process violations. Thirty-three of the eighty-two
plaintiffs added a third claim of political harassment to their
lawsuit. The political discrimination and due process claims arose
from the discharges themselves, while the political harassment
claims alleged shoddy treatment in the months preceding the
terminations.
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package of compensatory and punitive damages totaling hundreds of
thousands of dollars, summing to a group total of $6,956,400.
After a flurry of post-trial motions, the court entered judgment on
the verdict. It then issued an order on January 30, 2002, applying
the doctrine of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel to
preclude defendants from litigating the defendants' liability for
political discrimination and denial of the plaintiffs' due process
rights. Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 213 F. Supp. 2d 38, 41
(D.P.R. 2002).
Defendants filed a timely appeal after this first trial,
challenging inter alia the sufficiency of the evidence at the
summary judgment stage, the sufficiency of the evidence at trial,
the severance of plaintiffs into four groups, the district court's
denial of qualified immunity, numerous evidentiary rulings, the
court's active participation at trial, the damage award, and the
court's application of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel.
Plaintiffs cross-appealed from the district court's denial of an
injunction ordering the reinstatement of all plaintiffs.
II.
Acevedo I and Acevedo II provide a lengthy exposition of
the background facts in this case. See Acevedo II, 204 F.3d at 4-
7; Acevedo I, 30 F. Supp. 2d at 143-45. We summarize those facts
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here, and supplement our recitation with an overview of the post-
Acevedo II developments.3
A. Stipulated and Undisputed Facts
Defendant Vera, representing the Popular Democratic Party
("PDP"), won the November 1996 mayoral election in Adjuntas, and
appointed Defendant Gonzalez, a fellow PDP member, to be the
Director of Human Resources on January 14, 1997. Vera and Gonzalez
inherited a municipal government whose ranks were swelled by 115
new hires during the seven-year administration of Rigoberto Ramos,
Vera's predecessor, and a member of the rival New Progressive Party
("NPP"). Of those 115 employees, only 2 were affiliated with the
PDP. By January 1997, the municipality employed 229 regular
employees, and the parties stipulated prior to trial that "many
departments were so overstaffed that some employees did not have
desks."
On April 30, 1996, the Puerto Rico Comptroller's Office
published an audit report, M-96-14, indicating that Adjuntas had
accrued annual budget deficits of at least $1,000,000 from 1985 to
1990. After Vera took office in January 1997, he commissioned a
second financial audit of the municipality by Reinaldo Ramirez, a
certified public accountant. Ramirez presented his report on May
3
The facts presented here are intended to convey a general
impression of the case. We provide additional facts in subsequent
sections of the discussion where they are pertinent to the legal
analysis.
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8, 1997, informing city officials that the municipality had a
budget deficit of over $5,000,000 and long term debts totaling more
than $2,000,000. Anticipating this unwelcome news, Vera had
previously hired a Human Resources Consulting firm in February 1997
to prepare a "Layoff Plan for Municipality of Adjuntas Employees"
(the "Plan"). The consultants completed the Plan in March 1997,
and it received approval from the Adjuntas Municipal Assembly on
April 2, 1997 (as required under Puerto Rico's Autonomous
Municipalities Act). See 21 P.R. Laws Ann. § 4551, as amended
(1995) ("Law 81"). On April 11, 1997, a copy of the Plan was
circulated to every municipal employee.
In broad strokes, the Plan (1) enumerated the steps the
municipality was obliged to undertake before firing employees
(including relocation, retraining, temporary unpaid leave,
demotions to vacant positions, and voluntary retirement); (2)
established an order of priority for laying off municipal workers;
and (3) established a series of procedures for earmarking
particular employees and job classifications for termination, and
for providing notice to the affected individuals. The Plan was not
self-executing. Instead, it authorized the termination of
municipal employees "[w]hen the Mayor determines that there are
financial problems and that as a result, programs or services are
being affected." The Mayor made this determination in May 1997
after conferring with Ramirez and the Human Resource consultants,
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and he ordered city officials to implement the Plan. When the dust
settled on October 31, 1997, 102 employees, including 82 NPP
members and 11 PDP members, had been fired from their career
positions.
Since January 1, 1997, the municipality has hired
seventy-seven new employees to "contract" or fixed-term jobs funded
through non-municipal sources (i.e. federal and state programs).
The most significant of these programs, referred to as "Law 52,"
allows municipalities to present job training proposals to the
Labor Department of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which may then
appropriate funds on an annual basis to underwrite the salaries of
a certain number of municipal employees that the city could not
otherwise afford. Only five of the eighty-two plaintiffs received
one of these seventy-seven appointments, the vast majority of which
went to PDP members.
B. Contested Facts
The trial featured a contentious dispute regarding the
period preceding the October 31, 1997, layoffs. The twenty
plaintiffs in the first trial group testified that, during this
period, the defendants sabotaged their working conditions by
denying NPP employees (and only NPP employees) basic amenities,
including phone privileges, short work breaks for breakfast, access
to restroom facilities, and the opportunity to drive municipal
vehicles to perform their job functions. Many plaintiffs testified
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that they were removed from their jobs entirely, and sent to random
locations where they were either given nothing to do for months on
end or else ordered to perform menial tasks outside the scope of
their job descriptions. The defendants denied these allegations,
contending that prior abuses of telephone privileges and municipal
vehicles had contributed to large budget overruns that compelled
the municipality to restrict access to these services. According
to defendants, the dearth of functioning bathroom facilities was a
consequence of plumbing and physical infrastructure deficiencies
that were ignored during the previous NPP mayoral administrations.
There was also a factual controversy concerning the
implementation of the Plan. The defendants insisted that the
particular layoff scheme developed in accordance with the Plan was
politically neutral in both its conception and implementation.
Noting that prior NPP administrations had almost exclusively hired
NPP members to fill over a hundred municipal positions in the
preceding years, they claimed it was inevitable that a seniority-
based layoff plan would disproportionately impact NPP employees.
Plaintiffs presented evidence of a different agenda. In
their view, Mayor Vera manipulated the Plan to produce
discriminatory results in three ways. First, he contravened
provisions of the Plan by failing to seriously consider measures
short of outright termination, including relocation, retraining,
temporary unpaid leave, demotions to vacant positions, and
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voluntary retirement.4 Second, the layoff scheme developed
pursuant to the Plan tied termination to seniority within job
classifications, rather than seniority across the board.
Hypothetically, under this scheme, an NPP librarian with seven
years of seniority could be laid off while a PDP office clerk with
five years of seniority retained her position. Vera's scheme thus
eschewed the possibility of retraining veteran NPP employees to
take over the jobs of less senior PDP members with jobs requiring
a similar skill set (but bearing a different classification),
thereby exacerbating the discriminatory impact of the layoffs.
Third, the seniority system employed by defendants incorporated a
fixed years-of-service threshold -- eight years and ten months --
that dated back precisely to the end of the previous PDP
administration in Adjuntas. In other words, any employee with
eight years and ten months of seniority (or more) was immune from
the layoffs. Accordingly, PDP members hired during that previous
administration were insulated from the layoffs, while all employees
4
Article X of the Lay Off Plan provides:
If the layoff is due to lack of funds, it must be
evaluated if it is possible to generate savings through
means other than requiring the elimination of permanent
positions. If the crisis is temporary, to consider
reducing the work day and granting unpaid leaves. To
consider, additionally, if it is feasible to retrain
employees in other functions or relocate them to other
positions within or outside the Municipality.
Article X, Layoff Plan for Municipality of Adjuntas Employees
(March 1997).
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hired thereafter (during the intervening NPP administrations) were
at risk of termination.
Finally, there was evidence that Vera contrived to shed
NPP employees with sufficient seniority to withstand the initial
round of layoffs by simply eliminating their job category
altogether. For example, if an NPP member employed as a "Citizens'
Affairs Specialist" outranked his PDP colleagues on the seniority
scale, the municipality would eliminate the Citizens' Affairs
Specialist position entirely, and then hire back the former PDP
Citizens' Affairs Specialists under the auspices of Law 52 or some
other employment program funded by outside sources.
III.
As a preliminary matter, we note that our review of the
legal issues in this case is handicapped considerably by the
defendants' failure to produce transcripts of the second half of
the trial. The defense began presenting its case on October 29,
and the court issued its instructions to the jury on November 19.
The only record of the defendants' case in chief before us is a
small excerpt of Mayor Vera's direct testimony on October 30, and
an excerpt of CPA Ramirez's direct testimony on November 6. The
informative value of even these tidbits is reduced substantially by
the defendants' failure to provide a transcript of the cross-
examination of these witnesses by plaintiffs' counsel.
Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure
clearly states that "[i]f the appellant intends to urge on appeal
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that a finding or conclusion is unsupported by the evidence or is
contrary to the evidence, the appellant must include in the record
a transcript of all evidence relevant to that finding or
conclusion." Fed. R. App. P. 10(b)(2). Elaborating on this
requirement, we have admonished appellants "with a regulatory
bordering on the monotonous" that
[t]his rule imposes a duty upon an appellant
to print all of the evidence, good and bad,
material to the point he wishes to raise.
Should an appellant spurn this duty and drape
an incomplete record around the court's neck,
the court in its discretion either may
scrutinize the merits of the case insofar as
the record permits, or may dismiss the appeal
if absence of a full transcript thwarts
intelligent review. In this vein, we have
held . . . that, should the record provided on
appeal preclude us from reaching a reasoned
determination on the merits, it is the
appellant who must bear the brunt of an
insufficient record on appeal.
Moore v. Murphy, 47 F.3d 8, 10-11 (1st Cir. 1995) (internal
citations and quotations omitted); see Scarfo v. Cabletron Sys.,
Inc., 54 F.3d 931, 963 (1st Cir. 1995); United States v. One Motor
Yacht Named Mercury, 527 F.2d 1112, 1113 (1st Cir. 1975).
We are left with no choice but to confine our review of
defendants' challenges to those claims adequately grounded in the
portions of the record produced on appeal. As we work our way
through their manifold claims of error, we identify those
challenges that we are unable to evaluate owing to the procedural
default.
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A. Pre-Trial Rulings
1. Sufficiency of the evidence at the summary judgment stage
In partially denying defendants' motion for summary
disposition of plaintiffs' political discrimination claims, the
district court offered the following explanation for its ruling:
Plaintiffs have put forth sufficient evidence
to sustain their initial burden that
Defendants' employment decisions were based on
improper and discriminatory motives.
Defendants have, however, put forth evidence
in support of their burden that regardless of
Plaintiffs' political affiliation, the
municipal budgetary crisis required the
municipality to cut jobs on the basis of
seniority . . . . The Court finds that this
proffer of evidence is sufficient to
demonstrate that regardless of political
affiliation, Defendants would have made the
same decision in laying off Plaintiffs.
Acevedo I, 30 F. Supp. 2d at 154. Defendants contend that this
finding mandated the dismissal of plaintiffs' political
discrimination claims under the rule established in Mt. Healthy
City Sch. Dis. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977), and
insist that the district court erred in shifting the burden of
proof back to plaintiffs to demonstrate that "they would not have
been fired 'but for' their political affiliation." Acevedo I, 30
F. Supp. 2d at 154 (citing Rodriguez-Pinto v. Tirado-Delgado, 982
F.2d 34, 39 (1st Cir. 1993); Aviles-Martinez v. Monroig, 963 F.2d
2, 5 (1st Cir. 1992)). The court compounded its error, in
defendants' view, by postponing a final ruling on plaintiffs'
political discrimination claims pending the submission of
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additional evidence from plaintiffs to demonstrate that they were
qualified to fill the seventy-seven new positions created by the
municipality after January 1, 1997. Defendants argue that the
court was obliged to rule in their favor on the basis of the
insufficient evidence currently before it.
These objections are unavailing. When a district court's
assessment of the evidentiary record at the summary judgment stage
is subsequently "overtaken" by a full trial and verdict, it is our
practice not to revisit that determination on appeal:
We need not address the merits of [a]
preverdict challenge to the sufficiency of the
evidence on the motion for summary judgment.
Such an attack on the denial of defendant's
motion for summary judgment "has been
overtaken by subsequent events, namely, a
full-dress trial and an adverse jury verdict"
. . . The rationale for this rule has been
based on the procedural fact that denial of a
motion for summary judgment "is merely a
judge's determination that genuine issues of
material fact exist. It is not a judgment,
and does not foreclose trial on issues on
which summary judgment was sought." Hence, a
challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence
adduced on the motion to support the district
court's conclusion that genuine issues of
material fact exist will not lie on appeal.
Eastern Mountain Platform Tennis, Inc. v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 40
F.3d 492, 500 (1st Cir. 1994) (internal citations omitted).
Accordingly, any sufficiency of the evidence challenge on appeal
must be grounded in the record as a whole. Here, defendants also
argue that the trial record considered in its entirety did not
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support the jury verdict, and we address that claim later in the
discussion.
2. Severance
On October 11, 1997, the district court severed the case
into four separate trials, finding that
it is not practical or just to subject one
jury panel to a trial in which 82 plaintiffs
with varying claims will be testifying. No
single jury panel would be able to remember
all of the testimony and evidence or be able
to reach a fair and impartial verdict at the
end of that time. It is the opinion of this
Court that severance will most likely result
in a just final disposition of this
litigation.
The defendants objected on numerous grounds, arguing inter alia
that the court's proposal (1) precluded defendants from eliciting
contradictory testimony among plaintiffs, (2) imposed increased
expense and inconvenience on defendants by compelling the
examination of expert witnesses and government officials on four
occasions rather than one, (3) reduced the likelihood of an
impartial jury for the second, third and fourth plaintiff groups,
and (4) hampered defendants' ability to portray the relevant events
to the jury in a comprehensive fashion. On October 15, the court
emphatically rejected these concerns in a written ruling:
The considerations alleged by Defendants as to
the fact that they would have to present
evidence at four different occasions is of
secondary importance. "A paramount
consideration at all times in the
administration of justice is a fair and
impartial trial to all litigants.
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Considerations of economy of time, money and
convenience of witnesses must yield thereto."
Acevedo-Garcia v. Vera-Monroig, 240 F.R.D. 26, 30 (D.P.R. 2001)
(quoting In re Bendectin Litigation, 857 F.2d 290, 308 (6th Cir.
1988)).
Defendants lodge two objections to the severance on
appeal. First, they argue that the district court's refusal to try
the claims of all eighty-two plaintiffs at once was inappropriate
and unfairly prejudicial. We can dispense with this argument
quickly. The decision to separate parties or claims is a case
management determination "peculiarly within the discretion of the
trial court," Gonzalez-Marin v. Equitable Life Assurance Socy., 845
F.2d 1140, 1145 (1st Cir. 1998), and courts of appeals accord broad
latitude to district courts in this area. Id.; Applewhite v.
Reichold Chems., Inc., 67 F.3d 571, 574 (5th Cir. 1995); New York
v. Hendrickson Bros., Inc., 840 F.2d 1065, 1082 (2d Cir. 1988). We
would note, however, that we need not rest our affirmance on this
deferential standard of review -- the circumstances of this case
compel the conclusion that the division of plaintiffs was a
legitimate and feasible means of efficiently conducting this
unwieldy litigation.
Defendants' second objection is more troublesome, and
implicates the particular procedural device employed by the
district court to quarter the proceedings. "Two types of
severances or separations of claims are contemplated by the Federal
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Rules of Civil Procedure -- one within the action itself, the other
resulting in a second, or new action." Official Comm. of Unsecured
Creditors v. Shapiro, 190 F.R.D. 352, 354 (E.D. Pa. 2000). Rule 21
of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure furnishes the mechanism for
separating a case into separate actions, i.e, severance: "Parties
may be dropped or added by order of the court on motion of any
party or of its own initiative at any stage of the action and on
such terms as are just. Any claim against a party may be severed
and proceeded with separately." Fed. R. Civ. P. 21; see 9 Charles
Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §
2387 (1971); 88 C.J.S. Trial § 17 (2003) ("A severance occurs when
a lawsuit is divided into two or more separate and independent or
distinct causes."). Rule 42(b), on the other hand, authorizes
courts to divide a single action into separate trials that remain
under the umbrella of the original solitary action:
The court, in furtherance of convenience or to
avoid prejudice, or when separate trials will
be conducive to expedition and economy, may
order a separate trial of any claim, cross-
claim, counterclaim, or third-party claim, or
of any separate issue or of any number of
claims, cross-claims, counterclaims, third-
party claims, or issues.
Fed. R. Civ. P. 42(b); see 9 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and
Procedure § 2387; 88 C.J.S. Trial § 17 ("An order for a separate
trial keeps the lawsuit intact while enabling the court to hear and
decide one or more issues without trying all of the controverted
issues at the same hearing.").
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The salient distinction between these two procedural
devices concerns the appealability of an order terminating the
proceedings in a partitioned piece of the litigation:
The judgment in a severed action is final,
enforceable and appealable when it disposes of
all parties and issues. Conversely, the order
entered at the conclusion of a separate trial
is often interlocutory because a final and
appealable judgment cannot be rendered until
all of the controlling issues have been tried
and decided.
88 C.J.S. Trial § 17; see White v. ABCO Eng'g Corp., 199 F.3d 140,
145 n.6 (3d Cir. 1999); 9 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and
Procedure § 2387 (1971) ("Separate trials usually will result in
one judgment, but severed claims become entirely independent
actions to be tried, and judgment entered thereon,
independently.").
Courts often confuse these two procedural devices. "The
procedure authorized by Rule 42(b) should be distinguished from
severance under Rule 21 . . . . Unfortunately, this distinction,
clear enough in theory, often is obscured in practice since at
times the courts talk of 'separate trial' and 'severance'
interchangeably." 9 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and
Procedure § 2387; see McDaniel v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 987 F.2d
298, 304 (5th Cir. 1993). Here, defendants argue that the court
committed reversible error by invoking Rule 42(b) as the basis for
partitioning the plaintiffs into four groups while conducting the
proceedings as if they had been severed under Rule 21.
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The district court addressed the distinction between Rule
42(b) and Rule 21 in its October 15 decision:
In the instant motion, Defendants contend that
severance of actions is covered by Rule 21 of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and not
by Rule 42(b). This distinction is of little
consequence because both rules provide the
Court with wide discretion to order severance
. . . . The Court's determination as to
whether it should sever the claims of
Plaintiffs under Rule 21 or whether it should
order separate trials under Rule 42 requires
the same considerations, and are within the
broad discretion of the District Court.
Acevedo-Garcia, 204 F.R.D. at 29-30. Although the court accurately
observed that it had wide discretion to manage the litigation under
either rule, the particular procedural device it employed is of
paramount importance in this appeal. Because our jurisdiction is
limited to "all final decisions of the district courts of the
United States," United States v. Leichter, 160 F.3d 33, 35 (1st
Cir. 1998) (emphasis added), we cannot exercise jurisdiction over
an appeal from a separate trial ordained under Rule 42(b). See In
re Licht & Semonoff, 796 F.2d 564, 569 (1st Cir. 1986) ("A 'final
decision' is ordinarily one which disposes of all the rights of all
the parties to an action.") (emphasis added). Moreover, since
separate trials do not individually produce final judgments, any
attempt to apply collateral estoppel to the remaining three trials
would be invalid under a Rule 42(b) regime. See NLRB v. Donna-Lee
Sportswear Co., 836 F.2d 31, 33-34 (1st Cir. 1987) (noting that one
"essential element which must be present for the successful
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application of issue preclusion" is that "the determination must
result in a valid and final judgment.") (emphasis added); Griffin
v. Burns, 570 F.2d 1065, 1072 (1st Cir. 1978) (same); Restatement
(Second) of Judgements § 27 (same).
As defendants concede, this is not a case where the
district court's intentions were ambiguous. See McDaniel, 987 F.2d
at 304. The district court's order of October 11 explicitly states
that "[e]ach Judgment entered at the end of each of these four
trials shall be final and appealable and published and subject to
all motions provided by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, such
as 'new trial,' 'judgment notwithstanding the verdict', etc."
Additionally, in its opinion rejecting defendants' objections to
the severance, the court reasoned that
conducting separate trials wherein the jury
verdict from each trial is final and
appealable as to each set of Plaintiffs
facilitates judicial economy and possible
settlement in this case by providing the
parties with some scale or model upon which to
re-assess whether further litigation would be
prudent or advantageous to their cause.
Acevedo-Garcia, 204 F.R.D. at 30. Thus, the court's references to
Rule 42(b) notwithstanding, its clearly articulated intent was to
sever the plaintiffs pursuant to Rule 21. The Third Circuit
observed in White that "[n]othing on the face of Rule 21 indicates
that it must be explicitly invoked in order to have effect. There
must be, however, a strong indication that the judge intended to
effect a severance." White, 199 F.3d at 145 n.6 (citing Allied
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Elevator, Inc. v. E. Tex. State Bank of Buna, 965 F.2d 34, 36 (5th
Cir. 1992)). That intent is manifest from the language of the
court's October 11 order. Accordingly, we find no reversible error
in the court's severance ruling under Rule 21, and we regard the
district court's entry of judgment on the verdict below as a final
and appealable judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.5B. The Trial
1. Evidentiary rulings
Plaintiffs aptly characterize the defendants' challenges
to the district court's evidentiary rulings as "rambling,"
"discursive" and "unrefined." Defendants' briefs narratively
recite a plethora of offending rulings in a scattershot format
devoid of legal authority, citations to analogous cases, or any
application of law to facts. Many of defendants' challenges
5
There is a potential argument, disavowed by defendants here,
that Rule 21 (entitled "Misjoinder and Non-Joinder of Parties") is
not applicable to cases where there has been no improper joinder of
parties at the outset. However, the prevailing rule in our sister
circuits is that a finding of misjoinder is not a prerequisite to
severing parties or claims under Rule 21. As the Second Circuit
observed in Wyndham Assoc. v. Bintliff, 398 F.2d 614 (2d Cir.
1968):
Rule 21 . . . provides that "Any claim against a party
may be severed and proceeded with separately." We
believe that this provision authorizes the severance of
any claim, even without a finding of improper joinder,
where there are sufficient other reasons for ordering a
severance.
Id. at 618; see Safeco Ins. Co. v. City of White House, 36 F.3d
540, 545-46 (6th Cir. 1994) (characterizing this principle as the
majority rule).
-21-
reference evidentiary rulings and/or courtroom exchanges that
occurred during their own case in chief, and hence are procedurally
defaulted as a consequence of their failure to produce the relevant
transcripts. The briefs also leave uncertain which of the dozens
of evidentiary challenges raised on appeal were properly preserved
below. See Reyes-Garcia v. Rodriguez & Del Valle, Inc., 82 F.3d
11, 14 (1st Cir. 1996). With one exception, the evidentiary
challenges that survive these procedural defects lack the developed
argumentation needed to trigger review on the merits. "We have
steadfastly deemed waived issues raised on appeal in a perfunctory
manner, not accompanied by developed argumentation." Mulvihill v.
Top-Flite Golf Co., 335 F.3d 15, 27 (1st Cir. 2003).
The one evidentiary challenge that does merit our
attention is the defendants' contention that the court improperly
admitted evidence about claims not at issue -- namely, political
harassment claims filed by particular plaintiffs that the court had
earlier dismissed. Defendants correctly point out that, in some
cases, evidence of previously dismissed claims may have an undue
tendency to suggest a decision on an improper basis. However, the
Supreme Court has ruled that such evidence is not ipso facto
inadmissible, noting that "[a] discriminatory act which is not made
the basis for a [] charge . . . may constitute relevant background
evidence in a proceeding in which the status of a current practice
is at issue." United Air Lines, Inc. v. Evans, 431 U.S. 553, 558
(1977); see O'Rourke v. City of Providence, 235 F.3d 713, 726 (1st
-22-
Cir. 2001); Morrison v. Carleton Woolen Mills, Inc., 108 F.3d 429,
439 (1st Cir. 1997). We find no abuse of discretion in the
district court's decision to admit this evidence as relevant
background "to show the atmosphere in which [plaintiffs] lived and
developed since Mayor Vera was elected Mayor."
2. Active participation of the court
Defendants allege that at various junctures during the
trial the district court inaccurately and prejudicially commented
on the evidence, truncated the defendants' cross-examination of
several plaintiffs, and chastised defense witnesses in front of the
jury. As we have previously observed, it is well settled that
the trial judge "has a perfect right -- albeit a right that should
be exercised with care -- to participate actively in the trial
proper." Logue v. Dore, 103 F.3d 1040, 1045 (1st Cir. 1997). "A
trial judge retains the common law power to question witnesses and
to comment on the evidence . . . . An inquiry into the judge's
conduct of the trial necessarily turns on the question of whether
the complaining party can show serious prejudice." United States
v. Gonzalez-Soberal, 109 F.3d 64, 72 (1st Cir. 1997).
We reiterate that the complaints grounded in defendants'
case in chief are defaulted on the basis of an inadequate record.
Defendants also fail to demonstrate "serious prejudice" arising
from the court's participation during plaintiffs' case in chief.
This was a lengthy and contentious trial featuring dozens of
witnesses, numerous sidebar conferences, and a myriad of other
-23-
procedural delays arising, inter alia, from the inartful labeling
and introduction of exhibits, translation difficulties, and a
continuing stream of objections from both parties. Under these
challenging circumstances, the court's efforts to accelerate the
pace of the trial with infrequent commentary on the evidence and
the occasional prodding of witnesses were amply justified and well
within its discretion. See Rosario-Diaz v. Gonzalez, 140 F.3d 312,
315 (1st Cir. 1998) ("The Civil Rules endow judges with formidable
case-management authority . . . . In exercising this power, trial
judges enjoy great latitude.") (citations omitted).
C. Post-Trial Rulings
1. Qualified Immunity
The Supreme Court has recognized that qualified immunity
embodies "an entitlement not to stand trial or face the other
burdens of litigation, conditioned on the resolution of the
essentially legal question whether the conduct of which the
plaintiff complains violated clearly established law." Mitchell v.
Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985). Defendants' efforts to invoke
the protections of qualified immunity at the summary judgment
stage, however, were rejected by the district court, which
concluded that "[p]laintiffs [] proffered evidence of a triable
issue of fact regarding a potentially discriminatory application of
the Layoff Plan . . . . Therefore, Defendants are not entitled to
qualified immunity for their allegedly discriminatory actions
merely because they assert they acted pursuant to [the Layoff
-24-
Plan]." Acevedo I, 30 F. Supp. 2d at 149. As previously noted, we
dismissed defendants' interlocutory appeal from this ruling,
determining that we lacked jurisdiction to review the factual
grounds for the district court's denial of qualified immunity.
Acevedo II, 204 F.3d at 10.
After the jury returned its verdict, defendants renewed
their challenge to the court's denial of qualified immunity,6
arguing that in light of the facts elicited at trial, "the
unlawfulness of implementing a layoff plan duly approved by the
municipal legislature according to seniority would not have been
apparent to a reasonable official." (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). The court once again rejected
defendants' claim, concluding that the jury's findings foreclosed
the availability of immunity:
For the record, the prohibition against
political discrimination was clearly
established in 1997 when Defendants acted to
violate Plaintiffs' constitutionally protected
rights. A jury trial was held wherein
Plaintiffs presented evidence that supported
their allegations of political discrimination.
The evidence led the Jury to conclude that
political affiliation was in fact a
substantial or motivating factor for Mayor
Vera Monroig's and Irma Gonzalez's actions . .
. . Therefore, the qualified immunity argument
that Defendants now make is simply an attempt
6
Where defendants continue to assert qualified immunity after
undergoing trial on a § 1983 claim, a post-trial grant of immunity
would still confer a benefit by shielding them from any liability
for monetary damages awarded by the jury. See Roldan-Plumey v.
Cerezo-Suarez, 115 F.3d 58, 65 (1st Cir. 1997).
-25-
to re-write the facts and re-litigate this
case.
Defendants allege two errors in the district court's
post-verdict denial of qualified immunity. First, they claim that
the court erred in failing to deliver two proposed instructions on
qualified immunity to the jury:
1. Proposed Jury Instruction 51: Qualified Immunity
Government officials performing discretionary functions
are granted qualified immunity from civil claims for
damages, if their conduct at the time of the alleged acts
that give rise to the civil damages "does not violate
clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of
which a reasonable person would have known." The
relevant inquiry "is the objective question whether a
reasonable officer could have believed the actions
alleged by the plaintiff herein" to be lawful, in light
of clearly established law and the information the state
official possessed.
2. Proposed Jury Instruction 53: Reach of Qualified
Immunity
Even defendants who violate constitutional rights enjoy
a qualified immunity that protects them from liability
for damages unless it is further demonstrated that their
conduct was unreasonable with respect to clearly
established rights and laws at the time of the conduct at
issue.
After proposing these instructions, defendants concede that they
failed to object on the record to the court's refusal to issue the
instructions before the jury retired to deliberate. Accordingly,
we review for plain error only. See Chestnut v. City of Lowell,
305 F.3d 18, 20 (1st Cir. 2002) (en banc) ("Failures to object,
unless a true waiver is involved, are almost always subject to
review for plain error."); Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules
-26-
of Civil Procedure, Report of the Civil Rules Advisory Committee
62-68 (March 14, 2001), revised Jul. 31, 2001 (modifying Rule 51 of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to provide for plain error
review of challenges to jury instructions where the claim was not
properly preserved).
The availability of qualified immunity after a trial is
a legal question informed by the jury's findings of fact, but
ultimately committed to the court's judgment. "When the case goes
to trial, the jury itself decides the issues of historical fact
that are determinative of the qualified immunity defense, but the
jury does not apply the law relating to qualified immunity to those
historical facts it finds; that is the court's duty." Johnson v.
Breeden, 280 F.3d 1308, 1318 (11th Cir. 2002); see Singh v. Blue
Cross/Blue Shield of Mass., 308 F.3d 25, 34 (1st Cir. 2002); Swain
v. Spinney, 117 F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 1997). Accordingly, there was
no error, let alone plain error, in the district court's refusal to
submit the proposed qualified immunity instructions to the jury.
Defendants also contend that the court committed
reversible error when it failed to grant a new trial or judgment
notwithstanding the verdict on the basis of qualified immunity.
They reinforce this second claim of error with two legal arguments.
First, they assert that the district court misapplied the second
prong of the familiar three-pronged qualified immunity test:
Determining whether qualified immunity is
available to a particular defendant at a
particular time requires a trifurcated
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inquiry. We ask, first, whether the plaintiff
has alleged the violation of a constitutional
right. If so, we then ask whether the
contours of the right were sufficiently
established at the time of the alleged
violation. Finally, we ask whether an
objectively reasonable official would have
believed that the action taken or omitted
violated that right.
Hatch v. Dept. for Children, Youth and their Families, 274 F.3d 12,
20 (1st Cir. 2001). Defendants contend that the court erroneously
characterized the "constitutional right" at issue as plaintiffs'
right not to be discriminated against on the basis of their
political beliefs during the implementation of the layoff plan.
They decry the excessive abstractness of this "right," citing
language from the Supreme Court's decision in Anderson v.
Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 (1987):
The operation of this standard depends
substantially upon the level of generality at
which the relevant "legal rule" is to be
identified . . . . If [referring to the right
to due process of law] the test of "clearly
established law" were to be applied at this
level of generality, it would bear no
relationship to the "objective legal
reasonableness" that is the touchstone of
Harlow. Plaintiffs would be able to convert
the rule of qualified immunity that our cases
plainly establish into a rule of virtually
unqualified liability simply by alleging a
violation of extremely abstract rights.
Id. at 639; see Rivera-Ramos v. Roman, 156 F.3d 276, 279-80 (1st
Cir. 1998). It is difficult to divine from defendants' briefs how
they would articulate the right at issue -- the pertinent
discussion is geared exclusively to demonstrating the absence of
-28-
any clearly established rule regulating the implementation of
seniority-based layoff plans. Of course, this approach commits the
Anderson fallacy in reverse by construing the relevant rights/rules
with such specificity that the predictably scant jurisprudence on
point would never satisfy the "clearly established" threshold.
In the end, their argument is unavailing. The clearly
established law both in this circuit and beyond precludes
government officials from discharging civil or "career" employees
for politically-motivated reasons. See Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S.
507 (1980); Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 (1976); Roldan-Plumey, 115
F.3d at 65-66; Jirau-Bernal v. Agrait, 37 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir.
1994). The complexity of the municipality's workforce reduction
plan suggests that it was conceived by the Adjuntas municipal
assembly as a politically neutral means of responding to the city's
fiscal crisis. Yet the jury could reasonably have found that while
the Plan itself was politically neutral, the method of
implementation revealed the defendants' discriminatory intent.
Defendants also raise a challenge under the third prong
of Hatch, relying on stipulated facts painting a bleak picture of
the municipality's financial status, see supra, and the conclusory
assertion that "the aforementioned set of circumstances clearly
demonstrate that defendants acted within the reasonable boundaries
of their duties under the lay-off plan." In limiting their focus
to the objective circumstances surrounding the implementation of
the Plan, defendants misconceive the salient inquiry under the
-29-
third prong of the qualified immunity analysis. As we observed in
Tang v. State of Rhode Island, 120 F.3d 325 (1st Cir. 1997):
The objective test focuses on the
reasonableness of the official's conduct
independent of motive. It is rarely going to
be manifestly unreasonable, judged apart from
motive, to [take certain action against] an
employee. But because of special
constitutional or statutory protections, some
motives can convert [those decisions] into
causes of action.
Id. at 327 (emphasis in original). Indeed, we recognized in
Acevedo II that illicit motive is the touchstone of a political
discrimination claim: "The plaintiffs allege that they were
terminated because of their political affiliation, a constitutional
claim that has no meaning absent the allegation of impermissible
motivation." Acevedo II, 204 F.3d at 11; see Stella v. Kelley, 63
F.3d 71, 74-75 (1st Cir. 1995). Here, as plaintiffs point out,
"the jury verdict necessarily rejected the claim that the seniority
system was a politically neutral method for implementing the Layoff
Plan."
Finally, defendants insist that the Supreme Court's
decision in Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194 (2001), establishes "a
margin for errors and expands the zone of protection in
discretionary determinations where an official reasonably believed
that he acted reasonably although [he] was later found to have
acted unlawfully." The district court aptly disposed of this
argument below by distinguishing Saucier on its facts:
-30-
Saucier involved a military police officer's
mistaken but reasonable belief that excessive
force was needed to protect the Vice President
of the United States from an unknown
demonstrator. Because high security measures
are needed to safeguard a United States Vice
President, because the degree of danger posed
by the demonstrator was unknown, and because
law enforcement officers are usually required
to make split-second, life and death
decisions, the Court held that the officer
acted reasonably . . . Mayor Vera Monroig and
Irma Gonzalez acted over a 10-month period of
time. As they had a long period within which
to assess the situation, the probability that
they could have made a "reasonable mistake" as
in the case of an officer guarding the Vice
President, is largely diminished.
Accordingly, we conclude that the district court did not err in
denying defendants' post-verdict request for qualified immunity.
2. Sufficiency of the evidence
After the jury issued its verdict, defendants moved for
judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b), or in the alternative
for a new trial pursuant to Rule 59. The district court denied
both avenues of relief, and defendants appealed. A party seeking
recourse under either rule faces an uphill battle:
In reviewing the denial of a motion for
directed verdict or for judgment
notwithstanding the verdict "we must examine
the evidence in the light most favorable to
the plaintiff and determine whether there are
facts and inferences reasonably drawn from
those facts which lead to but one conclusion -
- that there is a total failure of evidence to
prove plaintiff's case."
Gutierrez-Rodriguez v. Cartagena, 882 F.2d 553, 558 (1st Cir. 1989)
(quoting Mayo v. Schooner Capital Corp., 825 F.2d 566, 568 (1st
-31-
Cir. 1987)). When considering a Rule 59(a) motion, "a district
court may set aside a jury's verdict and order a new trial only if
the verdict is against the demonstrable weight of the credible
evidence or results in a blatant miscarriage of justice." Sanchez
v. Puerto Rico Oil Co., 37 F.3d 712, 717 (1st Cir. 1994).
Defendants' failure to produce the transcripts from their
own case in chief precludes review of their sufficiency of the
evidence challenges. It is well-settled that a court must review
a sufficiency of the evidence challenge against the backdrop of the
record as a whole. See United States v. McLaughlin, 957 F.2d 12,
18 (1st Cir. 1992) ("In reviewing the record for a sufficiency of
the evidence appeal, it is well established that the evidence must
be examined in its entirety . . . "); N.Y. State Elec. & Gas Corp.
v. Sec'y of Labor, 88 F.3d 98, 108 (2d Cir. 1996) ("[T]he
sufficiency of the evidence is tested on appeal by viewing the
entire record."). As noted above, Rule 10 of the Federal Rules of
Appellate Procedure requires an appellant contesting the
sufficiency of the evidence on appeal to "include in the record a
transcript of all evidence relevant to that finding or conclusion."
Fed. R. App. P. 10(b)(2). Our previous jurisprudence establishes
that the evidence "relevant" to a finding of sufficiency (or lack
thereof) is the record as a whole. Since "it is the appellant who
must bear the brunt of an insufficient record on appeal," Moore, 47
F.3d at 11, we must conclude that defendants have procedurally
defaulted their sufficiency of the evidence challenges.
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3. Damages
Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
permits a party aggrieved by the jury verdict to move "to alter or
amend the judgment" within ten days after entry of judgment. Fed.
R. Civ. P. 59(e). Pursuant to Rule 59(e), the defendants filed a
timely motion seeking reduction or remittitur of the damage award
for each plaintiff. Where defendants properly preserve a challenge
to the amount of compensatory damages awarded by the jury, "our
inquiry is limited to determining 'whether the trial court abused
its discretion in refusing to set aside the verdict as excessive.'"
Anthony v. G.M.D. Airline Servs., Inc., 17 F.3d 490, 493 (1st Cir.
1994) (quoting McDonald v. Fed. Labs., Inc., 724 F.2d 243, 246 (1st
Cir. 1984)). The review of a preserved challenge to a punitive
damages award "is de novo, and the award will stand unless we find
it 'certain' that the amount in question exceeds that necessary to
punish and deter the alleged misconduct." Romano v. U-Haul Int'l,
233 F.3d 655, 672 (1st Cir. 2000).
These deferential standards of review implicitly
recognize that "[t]ranslating legal damage into money damages --
especially in cases which involve few significant items of
measurable economic loss -- is a matter peculiarly within the
jury's ken." Gutierrez-Rodriguez v. Cartagena, 882 F.2d 553, 577
(1st Cir. 1989); see Brown v. Freedman Baking Co., 810 F.2d 6, 11
(1st Cir. 1987) ("We rarely will override the jury's judgment on
the appropriate amount of damages to be awarded."); Segal v.
-33-
Gilbert Color Systems, Inc., 746 F.2d 78, 81 (1st Cir. 1984) ("This
court has consistently declined to play Monday morning quarterback
in reviewing a jury's assessment of damages."). Consequently,
defendants bear the onerous burden of proving to our satisfaction
that the damage award was "grossly excessive, inordinate, shocking
to the conscience of the court, or so high that it would be a
denial of justice to permit it to stand." Correa v. Hospital San
Francisco, 69 F.3d 1184, 1197 (1st Cir. 1995) (quoting Segal, 746
F.2d at 81).
The district court issued a strong endorsement of the
jury verdict in rejecting defendants' Rule 59(e) motion below:
The Court believes that the Jury considered
all of the evidence presented, and fashioned
their award in light of Plaintiffs' economic
damages, and damages resulting from pain and
suffering. Simply put, the verdict was not
against the weight of the evidence.
Considering the significant disruptions which
Defendants' actions caused the Plaintiffs'
lifestyles, the Court does not find that the
compensatory and punitive damages award for
each individual Plaintiff . . . is grossly
excessive or inordinate. Further, after
weighing the evidence, the Court finds that
the damage award also does not shock the
conscience.
Acevedo-Garcia, 213 F. Supp. 2d at 53. On appeal, defendants
reiterate their objections to the jury verdict as excessive. They
also raise a new argument that was not submitted to the district
court -- namely, that the jury's award of compensatory damages for
due process violations was duplicative of the political
discrimination damages also awarded as part of the verdict.
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a. Duplicate damages
This argument, which is premised on an error of law, has
more force than defendants' factually grounded claim of excessive
damages. Before addressing the consequences of defendants' failure
to preserve this argument below, we examine the merits of the claim
itself.
By way of background, the jury award was broken down into
five components for the eight plaintiffs alleging discrimination,
due process violations and harassment:
(1) Due process violations;
(2) Political discrimination in the form of
harassment;
(3) Political discrimination resulting in dismissal
causing pain and suffering;
(4) Political discrimination resulting in dismissal
causing loss of earnings; and
(5) Punitive damages
For the twelve plaintiffs alleging only political discrimination
and due process injuries, the jury award contained all of the above
components except (2).7
7
The individual damage awards for each plaintiff are too
lengthy to list here. As a general matter, there was some
uniformity among the damage awards. For category (1), all twenty
plaintiffs received $75,000 in compensatory damages from Defendant
Vera and $75,000 from Defendant Gonzalez. Every plaintiff also
received $15,000 in punitive damages from Defendant Vera and
$15,000 in punitive damages from Defendant Monroig.
Categories (2), (3), and (4) produced some variation. For the
eight plaintiffs alleging political harassment, the jury found that
four had failed to prove political harassment, and awarded no
damages in this category. Two plaintiffs received $50,000, and the
other two received $75,000. Finally, the awards for pain and
suffering ranged from $75,000 to $150,000, and the awards for lost
earnings ran the gamut from zero damages awarded to $55,000 (all
awards in this category reflected varying percentage reductions for
-35-
Defendants point out that plaintiffs' Fourteenth
Amendment due process claims arise from the municipality's failure
to offer the claimants alternatives to outright termination. The
consequences of this denial of due process include the normal
injuries associated with removal from a secure job -- lost
earnings, pain and suffering associated with unemployment, lost
future income, etc. Defendants contend that their alleged
violation of defendants' First Amendment rights resulted in
precisely the same harms. Because the jury essentially compensated
plaintiffs for their unemployment injuries twice -- once under a
First Amendment theory and once under a Fourteenth Amendment theory
-- defendants argue that the court erred as a matter of law in
entering judgment on a "double award" for the same injury.
It is well-settled that double awards for the same injury
are impermissible. Lewis v. Kendrick, 944 F.2d 949, 954 (1st Cir.
1991); Freeman v. Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1345 (1st Cir.
1988). Moreover, Congress intended for compensatory damages in
section 1983 cases to remedy only actual injuries caused by a
deprivation of constitutional rights, and not "the abstract 'value'
of [] due process and First Amendment rights." Memphis Community
Sch. Dist. v. Stachura, 477 U.S. 299, 313 (1986). The Supreme
Court elaborated in Stachura that
required mitigation of damages).
-36-
when § 1983 plaintiffs seek damages for
violations of constitutional rights, the level
of damages is ordinarily determined according
to principles derived from the common law of
torts . . . . Congress adopted this common-law
system of recovery when it established
liability for "constitutional torts."
Consequently, "the basic purpose" of § 1983
damages is "to compensate persons for injuries
that are caused by the deprivation of
constitutional rights."
Id. at 306-07 (quoting Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 254 (1978)).
Consequently, any duplication problem cannot be resolved by
conceptualizing First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment violations
as distinct "injuries" warranting separate compensation.
In defending the jury verdict, plaintiffs argue that the
damages awarded for the due process violations were retrospective
in nature, designed to compensate the claimants for wages lost from
the date of dismissal to the date of the verdict. By contrast, the
compensatory damages awarded for defendants' Fourteenth Amendment
violations were forward-looking and intended to remedy the
plaintiffs' lost property rights8 in their career employment
positions. Specifically, plaintiffs argue that
because career employment carries with it an
expectancy of continued income prospectively
(front pay), retirement and medical insurance
8
Puerto Rico law grants career employees a property interest
in their government positions: "Regular career employees are those
who have entered the system after undergoing the recruitment
procedure established in this subtitle, including the probational
period. These employees shall be entitled to permanent status and
may only be removed from their positions for just cause after due
filing of charges." 21 P.R. Laws Ann. § 4554(b) (1991).
-37-
(lost benefits), and the security of
continuing employment terminable only for
cause, a deprivation of that right permits an
additional award. This award is legally
distinguishable in that it represents
compensation for prospective losses, from the
date of the trial forward, whereas political
discrimination damages are calculated
retroactively from the date of trial.
We agree with plaintiffs that both front and back pay are valid
elements of a compensatory damage award under section 1983.
Indeed, "compensatory damages may include not only out-of-pocket
loss and other monetary harms, but also such injuries as
'impairment of reputation . . ., personal humiliation, and mental
anguish and suffering.'" Stachura, 477 U.S. at 307 (quoting Gertz
v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 350 (1974)); see Davet v.
Maccarone, 973 F.2d 22, 29 (1st Cir. 1992).
In support of their argument that the jury apportioned
its compensatory damage awards between the First Amendment and
Fourteenth Amendment violations, plaintiffs refer us to the
"Political Discrimination" section of the special verdict form,
which directs the jury to "indicate the amount of back pay to date
[plaintiff] should receive" if political affiliation was a
substantial or motivating factor in his/her dismissal (emphasis
added). Yet there is no analogous reference to front pay in either
the jury instructions or the due process section of the verdict
form, which simply provides that "[u]nder the law you may choose to
award damages for a violation of due process. If you answered
-38-
'YES' to the previous question [addressing liability], state the
amount of damages this Plaintiff should be awarded from
[defendants]" (emphasis added).
Moreover, plaintiffs' theory of apportionment arguably
suffers from another flaw. If the jury had found defendants guilty
of either a due process violation or a First Amendment violation,
but not both, plaintiffs would still be entitled to front pay, back
pay, and pain and suffering, because the singular violation would
still have resulted in the loss of career employment and any
secondary harms flowing from that loss. Put differently, nothing
inherent in the nature of a due process violation limits the
resulting economic injury to front pay, and nothing inherent in an
act of political discrimination inflicts an injury that is limited
to back pay.
Finally, we note that the court's duplicative damage
instruction was worded so as to suggest that the relevant "injury"
that could not be doubly compensated was the violation of a
constitutional right, rather than an actual loss or harm.
In awarding damages you should be careful not
to award duplicate damages. Plaintiffs are
entitled to collect full compensation for
their injuries if proved, but they must not
collect more than once for the same wrong . .
. . Again, each plaintiff is entitled to
collect full compensation for his or her
injury but the plaintiff must not collect more
than once for the same wrong.
-39-
(emphasis added). The court's use of the term "wrong," read in
conjunction with a special verdict form divided into separate
sections for each constitutional violation, may have led the jury
to conceptualize the term "injury" as the violation of a
constitutional right vel non, rather than an actual loss caused by
the violation of that right. See Stachura, 477 U.S. at 306-07;
Carey, 435 U.S. at 254. Possibly, in the absence of more detailed
instructions supporting plaintiffs' front pay/back pay theory, the
jury may have erroneously awarded duplicative damages by
compensating plaintiffs for the same actual losses under both a due
process and political discrimination theory of liability. We
acknowledge, therefore, that the lack of clarity in the court's
duplicative damages instruction was obvious error which may
potentially have resulted in an improper award of double damages.
We must now decide whether defendants are entitled to
relief in the face of this error. Defendants were on notice
throughout the proceedings that plaintiffs were seeking recovery for
both due process violations and political discrimination. To the
extent that a jury award on both claims would be duplicative, the
proper practice is to ensure that the verdict form is structured so
as to allow the jury to recompense the plaintiffs' injuries just
once. As we observed in Britton v. Murphy, 196 F.3d 24, 32 (1st
Cir. 1999):
The problem of guarding against double
recovery is a familiar one when multiple
-40-
claims exist but separate damages on each
would be partly or wholly duplicative. If the
parties explicitly agree that the damages
should be the same on each claim, then it is
easy enough to construct special
interrogatories that identify separate bases
for liability but have only a single line for
damages. On the other hand, when the amounts
awarded could conceivably differ depending on
the claim but may also involve some overlap,
verdict forms sometimes require a separate
specification of damages for each claim on
which the jury determines liability, leaving
it to the judge to make the appropriate
adjustments to avoid double recovery.
Id. (internal citation omitted). Defendants could also have
requested jury instructions that clearly directed the jury to
compensate the plaintiffs' unemployment injuries just once. Here,
defendants failed to lodge a pertinent objection to either the jury
instructions or the verdict form. Even after the jury delivered its
sizeable verdict, defendants never submitted a post-trial motion
challenging the actual award as duplicative. Accordingly, we review
the appellants' allegation of duplicative damages for plain error
only. See Chestnut, 305 F.3d at 20 (verdict form); M & I Heat
Transfer Prods. v. Gorchev, 141 F.3d 21, 23 (1st Cir. 1998) (jury
instructions); Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, Report of the Civil Rules Advisory Committee 62-68;
supra.
"We apply the plain error doctrine 'in exceptional cases
or under peculiar circumstances to prevent a clear miscarriage of
justice . . . [or] where the error seriously affected the fairness,
-41-
integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.'" Rocafort
v. IBM Corp., 334 F.3d 115, 122 (1st Cir. 2003) (citing Beatty v.
Michael Bus. Machs. Corp., 172 F.3d 117, 121 (1st Cir. 1999). Our
previous cases reflect a marked reluctance to find plain error in
civil cases: "[E]specially in a civil case this is a very hard test
to meet because over and above plain error, it requires a showing
both of prejudice and a miscarriage of justice or something of this
magnitude." Fraser v. Major League Soccer, L.L.C., 284 F.3d 47, 62
(1st Cir. 2002) (citing Davis v. Rennie, 264 F.3d 86, 100-01 (1st
Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 123 S.Ct. 118 (2002)).
Defendants' claim for relief from the alleged double
damages founders on the prejudice prong of the plain error standard.
In reaching this conclusion, we are in no way trivializing the
consequences of this verdict for the municipality of Adjuntas and
the individual defendants. The jury returned a verdict of
$6,956,400, of which $6,356,400 (the total jury award, excluding
punitive damages)9 was against a municipality whose entire annual
budget in 1996-97 was only $4,529,327. See Exhibit 2, Defendants'
Statement of Uncontested Facts (July 17, 1998). Moreover, this
figure reflects the damages owed only to the first twenty
plaintiffs; sixty-two plaintiffs remain in the queue. But
"prejudice," as that term is incorporated into the plain error test,
9
In City of Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 458 U.S. 247(1981), the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities are immune from
punitive damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See id. at 271.
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requires a strong causal link between the harm to the aggrieved
party and the legal error. At best, defendants can only demonstrate
the possibility that faulty jury instructions resulted in a
duplicative damage award.
Indeed, the appellate materials set forth competing
explanations for the jury's award of damages under both a due
process and First Amendment theory of liability. Appellants argue
that the compensatory damages awarded under each theory doubly
recompensed claimants for their actual losses, while appellees
insist that the jury compensated plaintiffs for their total loss
just once, but divided that single award between the due process and
First Amendment causes of action. Nothing in this record precludes
that possibility, or rules out other appropriate bases for the jury
award. For defendants who fail to protect themselves on the record
by requesting jury instructions and/or special verdict forms
structured to preclude the possibility of a double damage award,
these possibilities are fatal to a request for plain error relief.
The "prejudice" component of the plain error standard implies a
stringent demonstration of causation. Thus, in Chestnut v. City of
Lowell, our decision to vacate a punitive damage award on plain
error review rested in part on the finding that "[p]rejudice in the
sense of affecting the final outcome is . . . obvious: had the jury
been instructed as to the City's immunity [from punitive damages]
there almost certainly would not be a $500,000 judgment against it
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today, although conceivably the jury might have somewhat increased
the compensatory damages." Chestnut, 305 F.3d at 20 (emphasis
added). Here, although we can speculate that the court's
instructions may have led the jury to erroneously award duplicative
damages, we have no concrete basis for accepting defendants'
characterization of the jury award. Under these circumstances, we
decline to expand the rule of Chestnut to encompass cases in which
prejudice to the aggrieved party is not manifest on the face of the
record.
b. Excessive damages
Defendants meticulously document the economic damages
awarded to each plaintiff, and argue mathematically that the totals
in every case exceed the lost wages (reduced by the appropriate
percentage for mitigation). As a threshold matter, the magnitude
of the claimed discrepancy is sufficiently small (ranging from
$2,607.94 to $10,900.00) to preclude a finding that the verdict was
"grossly excessive, inordinate, shocking to the conscience of the
court, or so high that it would be a denial of justice to permit it
to stand." Correa, 69 F.3d at 1197; Segal, 746 F.2d at 81.
Furthermore, the jury was entitled to consider any secondary
economic injuries flowing from the plaintiffs' loss of earnings and
employment benefits. See Stachura, 477 U.S. at 307; Davet, 973 F.2d
at 29. For example, nearly every claimant testified that they
relied entirely on their monthly earnings to cover the expenses of
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running their household, meet their mortgage obligations, pay their
childrens' tuition, etc. As a consequence of losing their jobs,
plaintiffs were forced to seek additional bank loans, dip into their
savings, and make other costly financial adjustments to cover these
expenses.
We also decline to set aside the damages awarded in the
other three categories (pain and suffering resulting from political
harassment, pain and suffering resulting from dismissal, and
punitive damages). Damages for pain and suffering defy "exact
mathematical computation," Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc. v. Amirault,
202 F.2d 893, 898 (1st Cir. 1953); and "are not susceptible to proof
by a dollar amount," Mejias-Quiros v. Maxxam Property Corp., 108
F.3d 425, 428 (1st Cir. 1997). The jury's awards of non-economic
compensatory damages and punitive damages were moderate in scope and
well within acceptable bounds. The individualized nature of the
twenty verdicts reflects the jury's careful attention to the
peculiar circumstances of each plaintiff, and evinces the jury's
desire to craft an appropriate award for each claimant.10
10
Plaintiffs argue on appeal that "[t]he due process award
effectively was the monetary equivalent of reinstatement. Should
that award be taken away or significantly reduced by this court,
plaintiffs will not have been made whole for their due process
injuries." Our decision to affirm that award moots plaintiffs'
cross appeal from the district court's denial of reinstatement.
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D. Non-Mutual Offensive Collateral Estoppel
On January 30, 2002, the district court issued an order
precluding the defendants from relitigating (with respect to the
remaining sixty-two plaintiffs) the following three issues that were
determinative of defendants’ liability in the first trial:
(1) That political affiliation was a substantial or
motivating factor in the implementation of the lay-off
plan.
(2) That Defendants violated Plaintiffs’ due process rights
by implementing the lay-off plan in a discriminatory
fashion.
(3) That Plaintiffs were discharged from their career
positions with the Municipality of Adjuntas on account of
their political affiliation; and other individuals were
employed to perform their duties under different titles,
and under different programs, in violation of the law.
Acevedo-Garcia, 213 F. Supp. 2d at 40. This ruling, if allowed to
stand, would confine the scope of the subsequent three trials to the
issue of damages. Not surprisingly, defendants vigorously dispute
the court’s application of collateral estoppel, raising a host of
objections that we consider in due course.
As a threshold matter, neither party disputes our
jurisdiction to review the court's application of collateral
estoppel. This case presents unique circumstances, however, that
call into question the ripeness of the collateral estoppel question.
See Pustell v. Lynn Pub. Sch., 18 F.3d 50, 51 n.1 (1st Cir. 1994)
(observing that we may raise issues of jurisdiction sua sponte).
Generally, a court will determine that collateral estoppel is
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appropriate within the very proceeding where the ruling is to have
its preclusive effect. Here, the district court announced its
attention to apply collateral estoppel at the end of Trial 1, but
the court's ruling will have no preclusive effect until Trials 2,
3, and 4, which are not currently before us. Because these trials
were severed into four independent proceedings pursuant to Rule 21,
see supra, any resolution of the collateral estoppel question will
have no effect on the rights of the parties as they pertain to Trial
1. See Cotter v. City of Boston, 323 F.3d 160, 173 (1st Cir. 2003)
("Article III's cases and controversies language prohibits federal
courts from issuing advisory opinions. A court may not decide
questions that cannot affect the rights of litigants in the case
before it.") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
In the end, however, we conclude that we have jurisdiction
to review the district court's application of collateral estoppel.
The four cases comprising this matter began as a single lawsuit.
The boundaries that now divide it into four severed cases are not
temporal or transactional in nature. Instead, they are a judicial
artifice imposed pursuant to the court's case management authority
under Rule 21 to streamline the proceedings in the subsequent three
trials. That the court chose to issue its collateral estoppel
ruling at the at the end of Trial 1 rather than the beginning of
Trial 2 in no way attenuates the finality of the order or the force
of its preclusive effect.
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Moreover, neither party disputes that the district court
-- the same court that is presiding over the subsequent trials --
has entered a final order decreeing that non-mutual offensive
collateral estoppel will be enforced in the subsequent three cases.
The contours of the order are clear from its language, and the
attorneys who litigated the issue below and now on appeal are the
counsel of record for plaintiffs and defendants in all four matters.
The district court's order bound the defendants as of its entry of
January 30, and the application of collateral estoppel in the
subsequent trials is a certainty beyond any speculation.
Accordingly, there is no compelling reason for us to delay our
review of the collateral estoppel question until the judgment in
Trial 2 is appealed. If, as a consequence of sidestepping the
collateral estoppel issue now, we belatedly reversed the district
court's estoppel ruling at that late stage, we would unnecessarily
void a burdensome litigation that is currently slated to involve
twenty plaintiffs and forty-eight claims. Disclaiming jurisdiction
over the district court's collateral estoppel ruling under these
circumstances would vindicate form over substance, to the detriment
of both parties and the district court. See Schneider v. Lockheed
Aircraft Corp., 658 F.2d 835, (D.C. Cir. 1981) ("The potential
future use of collateral estoppel in the remaining cases requires
that we address these arguments in the interest of sound judicial
administration.").
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The brand of collateral estoppel applied by the district
court -- non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel -- historically
spawned the greatest misgivings among jurists. Prior to the Supreme
Court’s decision in Blonder-Tongue Labs. v. Univ. of Ill. Found.,
402 U.S. 313 (1971), many courts adhered to the doctrine of
“mutuality of estoppel,” which ordained that “unless both parties
(or their privies) in a second action are bound by a judgment in a
previous case, neither party (nor his privy) in the second action
may use the prior judgment as determinative of an issue in a second
action.” Id. at 320-21; see Triplett v. Lowell, 297 U.S. 638, 644
(1936); Restatement of Judgments § 93 (1942) (“[A] person who is not
a party or privy to a party to an action in which a valid judgment
. . . is rendered (a) cannot directly or collaterally attack the
judgment, and (b) is not bound by or entitled to claim the benefits
of an adjudication upon any matter decided in the action.”).11 The
Blonder-Tongue Court determined that the traditional rationales
11
In the case at bar, the application of collateral estoppel
is “non-mutual” in the sense that the sixty-two plaintiffs
benefitting from the pre-determination of liability were not
parties in the trial of the first twenty plaintiffs, where the
liability question was originally litigated.
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undergirding the mutuality requirement12 were unavailing in the face
of weightier institutional concerns:
In any lawsuit where a defendant, because of
the mutuality principle, is forced to present
a complete defense on the merits to a claim
which the plaintiff has fully litigated and
lost in a prior action, there is an arguable
misallocation of resources. To the extent the
defendant in the second suit may not win by
asserting, without contradiction, that the
plaintiff had fully and fairly, but
unsuccessfully, litigated the same claim in the
prior suit, the defendant's time and money are
diverted from alternative uses -- productive or
otherwise -- to relitigation of a decided
issue. And, still assuming that the issue was
resolved correctly in the first suit, there is
reason to be concerned about the plaintiff's
allocation of resources. Permitting repeated
litigation of the same issue as long as the
supply of unrelated defendants holds out
reflects either the aura of the gaming table or
“a lack of discipline and of disinterestedness
on the part of the lower courts, hardly a
worthy or wise basis for fashioning rules of
procedure.”
Id. at 329 (quoting Kerotest Mfg. Co. v. C-O Two Co., 342 U.S. 180,
185 (1952)). The excerpted language from Blonder-Tongue endorses
12
According to Wright, Miller & Cooper:
The basic arguments against nonmutual preclusion may be
seen from two aspects . . . . [T]he nonparty who seeks to
invoke nonmutual preclusion has never had to bear the
burdens of litigating the issues, and accordingly
presents a much weaker claim than a party who has borne
these burdens or a privy who has at least run the risk of
defeat . . . . [T]he [second] argument is simply that the
risk of proliferating the consequences of a mistaken
judgment cannot be justified absent the full range of
needs that require preclusion between parties and those
in privity with them.
18A Federal Practice & Procedure § 4464 (2d ed. 2002).
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the application of non-mutual defensive collateral estoppel.
Collateral estoppel is “defensive” when wielded by a defendant to
bar plaintiffs from relitigating an issue(s) previously decided in
his favor in a suit involving other plaintiffs. For the reasons
articulated by Justice White, permitting litigants to assert
collateral estoppel in a defensive pose promotes efficiency by
discouraging speculative lawsuits and conserving the resources of
defendants.
Non-mutual collateral estoppel may be asserted offensively
as well. That is, where, as here, plaintiffs seek to use issue
preclusion to tie the defendants' hands with an adversely decided
issue from a previous case, the use of collateral estoppel is deemed
“offensive.” As the Supreme Court recognized, the offensive use of
non-mutual collateral raises special concerns:
First, offensive use of collateral estoppel
does not promote judicial economy in the same
manner as defensive use does. Defensive use of
collateral estoppel precludes a plaintiff from
relitigating identical issues by merely
"switching adversaries." Thus defensive
collateral estoppel gives a plaintiff a strong
incentive to join all potential defendants in
the first action if possible. Offensive use of
collateral estoppel, on the other hand, creates
precisely the opposite incentive. Since a
plaintiff will be able to rely on a previous
judgment against a defendant but will not be
bound by that judgment if the defendant wins,
the plaintiff has every incentive to adopt a
"wait and see" attitude, in the hope that the
first action by another plaintiff will result
in a favorable judgment. Thus offensive use of
collateral estoppel will likely increase rather
than decrease the total amount of litigation,
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since potential plaintiffs will have everything
to gain and nothing to lose by not intervening
in the first action.
A second argument against offensive use of
collateral estoppel is that it may be unfair to
a defendant. If a defendant in the first action
is sued for small or nominal damages, he may
have little incentive to defend vigorously,
particularly if future suits are not
foreseeable. Allowing offensive collateral
estoppel may also be unfair to a defendant if
the judgment relied upon as a basis for the
estoppel is itself inconsistent with one or
more previous judgments in favor of the
defendant. Still another situation where it
might be unfair to apply offensive estoppel is
where the second action affords the defendant
procedural opportunities unavailable in the
first action that could readily cause a
different result.
Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 329-31 (1979) (internal
citations and footnotes omitted). Notwithstanding these concerns,
the Supreme Court completed its break with traditional collateral
estoppel doctrine in Parklane Hosiery by according district courts
broad discretion to apply non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel:
We have concluded that the preferable approach
for dealing with these problems in the federal
courts is not to preclude the use of offensive
collateral estoppel, but to grant trial courts
broad discretion to determine when it should be
applied. The general rule should be that in
cases where a plaintiff could easily have
joined in the earlier action or where, either
for the reasons discussed above or for other
reasons, the application of offensive estoppel
would be unfair to a defendant, a trial judge
should not allow the use of offensive
collateral estoppel.
Id. at 331.
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Significantly, the Supreme Court's apprehensive regard for
non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel is rooted in considerations
that are inapposite in a unique case such as this where a court
applies collateral estoppel to pieces of a severed action over which
it is presiding. In the case at bar, the district court exercised
its discretion under Rule 21 to mandate the severance of plaintiffs
into four trial groups, thereby prohibiting the sixty-two plaintiffs
in groups 2, 3 and 4 from voluntarily joining the first litigation.
Once the action was severed, the prospect of multiple trials was
eminently foreseeable to the defendants, if not explicitly assured.
Moreover, with one eye on the impending three trials, and the other
on their potentially immense exposure to the first group of twenty
plaintiffs, see supra, the defendants had every possible incentive
to vigorously litigate the issue of liability in the first action.
See id. The contentious proceedings below, coupled with the copious
materials filed by appellants in this appeal, confirm that
defendants zealously contested (and continue to contest) the issue
of liability to the first plaintiff group. Finally, because the
court severed the proceedings on the eve of trial, defendants have
fully availed themselves of discovery and other pre-trial procedures
with respect to all eighty-two plaintiffs. Accordingly, there is
little risk that the subsequent proceedings will "afford[] the
defendant[s] procedural opportunities unavailable in the first
action that could readily cause a different result." Id. The
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district court's stated intent to preside over all four trials
further suggests that trial and post-trial procedures for the
remaining sixty-two plaintiffs will not vary substantially from the
procedural opportunities available in the first trial.
Having addressed the background concerns raised by the
application of non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel, we turn our
attention to the most important question -- whether defendants
"received a full and fair opportunity to litigate their claims" in
the first trial. Parkland Hosiery, 439 U.S. at 332. Our prior
jurisprudence enumerates four factors that we consider in this
regard:
(1) an identity of issues (that is, that the issue sought to
be precluded is the same as that which was involved in
the prior proceeding),
(2) actuality of litigation (that is, that the point was
actually litigated in the earlier proceeding),
(3) finality of the earlier resolution (that is, that the
issue was determined by a valid and binding final
judgment or order), and
(4) the centrality of the adjudication (that is, that the
determination of the issue in the prior proceeding was
essential to the final judgment or order).
Faigin v. Kelly, 184 F.3d 67, 78 (1st Cir. 1999); see Grella v.
Salem Five Cent Sav. Bank, 42 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 1994); NLRB v.
Donna-Lee Sportswear Co., 836 F.2d 31, 34 (1st Cir. 1987).
Our focus here is confined to factor (2) -- actuality of
litigation. To satisfy this factor, the party seeking to impose
issue preclusion must demonstrate that the issue to be given
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preclusive effect was actually litigated in the prior proceeding.13
Without excluding the possibility of other problems with the scope
of the court's collateral estoppel order, we cite by way of
illustration the political discrimination claims of plaintiffs.
Those First Amendment claims implicate the burden-shifting framework
set forth in Mt. Healthy City School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle,
429 U.S. 274, 287 (1977). To satisfy the first prong of the Mt.
Healthy framework, plaintiffs must demonstrate that they engaged in
constitutionally protected activities, and that this protected
conduct was a substantial or motivating factor in an employer's
adverse employment action. If plaintiffs satisfy the first prong,
the second prong of Mt. Healthy shifts the burden to defendant to
prove "by a preponderance of the evidence" that the plaintiff would
have been subject to the adverse employment act even if he had not
engaged in the protected conduct. Id. at 278; Lewis, 321 F.3d at
219.
13
We reproduce the three issues once more for the reader's
benefit:
(1) That political affiliation was a substantial or
motivating factor in the implementation of the lay-off
plan.
(2) That Defendants violated Plaintiffs’ due process rights
by implementing the lay-off plan in a discriminatory
fashion.
(3) That Plaintiffs were discharged from their career
positions with the Municipality of Adjuntas on account of
their political affiliation; and other individuals were
employed to perform their duties under different titles,
and other different programs, in violation of the law.
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The record indicates that eighty-two plaintiffs brought
claims against the defendants, but the municipality only made
seventy-seven new hires over the relevant period. Accordingly, it
stands to reason that not every plaintiff was substituted for on a
one-to-one basis. More fundamentally, application of the Mt.
Healthy defense necessarily varies with the circumstances of the
individual plaintiffs. Certain plaintiffs may have held municipal
positions that were so superfluous or duplicative of the duties
assigned to other employees that defendants could reasonably argue
that these plaintiffs would have been terminated regardless of their
political affiliation. Put differently, the defendants might be
able to establish that the position of certain municipal employees
were sufficiently precarious that they would have been eliminated
under a properly motivated or improperly motivated implementation
of the plan. This contention has never actually been litigated
because it is necessarily unique to the circumstances of the
particular plaintiffs involved in Trial 2. Yet the second clause
of the third issue designates for preclusive effect the
"established" fact that "other individuals were employed to perform
their duties under different title, and other different programs,
in violation of the law." In our view, this ruling runs afoul of
the actual litigation requirement.
Our ruling is not intended to suggest that any flaws in
the collateral estoppel order are limited to the second clause of
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the third issue. Having identified this problem, however, we cannot
go on to approve even in part a collateral estoppel order that
purports to preclude any liability defense in Trial 2. Where even
one issue of liability must be made available to defendants in the
second trial, granting preclusive effect to the other issues may not
result in efficiency gains because litigation of the "live" issue
may require introduction of some of the same evidence pertinent to
the estopped issues. See 18A Wright, Miller & Cooper § 4465.3 ("The
need to relitigate individual issues that overlap the common issues
may provide a special reason to deny preclusion -- little if any
trial time will be spared . . .").
Still, for the reasons enumerated in the preceding
background discussion, we acknowledge that non-mutual offensive
collateral estoppel may well be a useful and appropriate trial
management device in the second trial. Our ruling is not intended
to discourage its application. However, any renewed consideration
of that doctrine by the trial court must be grounded in the
proceedings of Trial 2. Specifically, the judge and the parties
should revisit the course of proceedings in Trial 1, and the issues
and proposed proof in Trial 2. The defendants and the second
plaintiff group should then have an opportunity to brief and argue
the question of how the doctrine of non-mutual offensive collateral
estoppel should be fairly applied in light of those considerations.
At this juncture, and at this remove from an impending second trial,
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we cannot determine with the necessary certitude that defendants
have had a full and fair opportunity to litigate all the relevant
dimensions of their liability defense. Accordingly, we must vacate
the court's collateral estoppel order.
IV.
The unique circumstances of this case presented the
district court with a number of complex questions in areas that have
previously received little attention in this circuit. The court
correctly resolved most of these issues in comprehensive written
decisions that greatly aided our review on appeal. The court also
acquitted itself admirably in managing this difficult litigation.
The errors we have cited in no way detract from our admiration for
and appreciation of the court's work.
We vacate the district court's collateral estoppel order.
In all other respects we affirm.
So ordered.
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