Civil Procedure II Outline - Part 20

cccc. Performs two important functions

1. First they notify a non-moving party such that she has failed to offer evidence concerning a key element of her case, thus giving her an opportunity to correct the omissions.
   1. 50(a)2 provides that “the motion must specify the judgment sought and the law and facts that entitle the movant to the judgment
2. Second, Save time and the expense of presenting his side of the case and would not have to risk a jury verdict. The judge and the jury would not have to hear the rest of a case for which the outcome is clear.

dddd. Motions for judgment as a matter of law under rule 50(b)

1. If the case goes to a jury, but a reasonable jury could find the verdict decided, the judge can exercise gatekeeping authority.
   1. If the movantant renews his motion for judgment as a matter of law, the judge can set aside the jury's verdict and enter judgment for the correct party instead.
      1. Rule 50 b authorises the judge to grant this renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law which most state courts refer to a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or jnov.

eeee. General Principle

1. As a general rule judges are supposed to decide legal issues and juries are supposed to determine the facts.
   1. When a judge grants a rule 50 motion, the judge has determined that a party has offered so little evidence that the facts can be determined as a matter of law.
      1. Rule 50 provides that a judge should do so only when a party has failed to offer a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to support a judgment in her favor.

ffff. When has a party offered legally sufficient evidence?

1. Bainbridge
   1. A rebuttable inference of fact must necessarily yield to credible evidence of the actual occurrence.
   2. Where the evidence is so overwhelmingly on one side as to leave no room to doubt what the fact is the court should give a prefatory instruction to the jury.
      1. Gives scientific certainty to the law in its application to the facts and promotes the ends of justice.
   3. Bainbridges testimony was “insufficient to rebut the substantial and contrary direct testimony that the railroad had offered.
2. The Test for sufficiency
   1. Whether the evidence is such that without weighing the credibility of the witness or otherwise considering the weight of the evidence, there can be but one conclusion as to the verdict that reasonable person could have reached. Wright V. Miller
3. In Entertaining a motion for judgment as a matter of law the court should review all of the evidence in the record.
   1. The court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non movant party and it may not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence. “Credibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions not those of a judge.
      1. Thus, although the court should review the record as a whole it must disregard all evidence favoring the nonmovant as well as that evidence supporting the moving party that is uncontradicted and impeach at least to the extent that the evidence comes from disinterested witnesses.

gggg. Judicial Reluctance to grant rule 50(a) motions

1. The answer turns on pragmatic concerns about what will happen if the judges grant the rule 50 a motion the losing party is likely to appeal =, arguing that the judge should have permitted her case to proceed to a jury verdict. If the appellate court agrees with Penny the court will remand the case for a retrial. Judges prefer to avoid this risk of a time-consuming and expensive retrial and thus grant rule 50 a motion only when the argument for doing so is so strong and the likelihood of reversal is low.
   1. This reluctance is especially understandable in light of what will happen if the judge denies a rule 50 a motion, the jury will probably see the weakness and render a verdict for that prayer anyway. If not rule 50 b gives the judge an opportunity to revise the decision to deny the rule 50a motion after the verdict.

hhhh. No reluctance for 50 (b)

1. When an appellate court reverses a 50 b motion the appellate court has determined that the jury's verdict was reasonable and should ont have been set aside. Under these circumstances the appellate court can remand the case with an instrument for the trial court to enter a judgment based on the jurys original verdict.
   1. No need for a retrial

iiii. The Legal Fiction of the renewed motion.

1. The Supreme Court upheld the entry of summary judgment and that it is not a violation of the right to a jury trial.
   1. The court reasoned that if a party makes a motion for judgment as a matter of law under rule 50 (a) before the case goes to the jury and the judge does ont grant the motion, the judge is considered to have conditionally submitted the case to a jury and can reassess the sufficiency of the evidence after the verdict. 50(b)
      1. If the court does not grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law made under rule 50a the court is considered to have submitted the action to the jury subject to the courts later deciding the legal questions raised by the motion.
2. Policy reasons for rule 50 b
   1. Without them judges would have no opportunity to correct an unsupportable jury verdict knowing that they lack this power, judges would be more inclined to grant rule 50 a motion in order to avoid the possibility of an unsupportable jury verdict.
      1. But granting more rule 50a motion also increased the likelihood of time-consuming and expensive retrials. The safety net of ulre 50(bz0 therefore gives judges a greater incentive to permit the case to proceed to a jury verdict.

jjjj. Why not summary judgment

1. First the parties might not have taken much if any discovery especially if the case involved relatively limited damages and the absence of any evidence to support penens case might only become apparent at trial.
2. Second, even if the parties took discovery, the evidence is not necessarily presented the same way at trial.
3. Summary judgment and judgments as a matter of law involve an examination of different information at different times in the litigation process. The standard that applies to each type of judgment however is identical.

kkkk. 1091 Chart Look it up.

llll. The Scintilla Alternative

1. In these states a court will deny a motion for judgment as a matter of law if the non-moving party has offered a mere scintilla of evidence in support of its position.
   1. These courts refuse to consider the quantity or quality of the evidence that is being presented. Thus the motion only succeeds or fails based only on a consideration of the non-moving parts evidence.
      1. Downside
         1. Undermines a court's ability to prevent a patently unreasonable jury verdict.