City of Cleveland v. Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co.

538 F. Supp. 1328
District Court, N.D. Ohio·Decided July 13, 1981·No. Civ. A. C75-560·Published·Cited by 7 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

KRUPANSKY, District Judge.

On November 19, 1980 an eleven week trial of the instant action concluded in a mistrial as a result of the jury’s inability to reach a verdict. Upon dismissing the jury and declaring a mistrial, the Court scheduled the retrial of this case for January 19, 1981. Upon the motion of the plaintiff City of Cleveland (City) for a continuance, the matter at bar was rescheduled for trial on May 18, 1981.

Presently before the Court is a motion by defendant Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI) to recognize as binding during the impending retrial some twenty-one (21) Orders issued by the Court during or immediately prior to the initial trial which disposed of certain issues in this case. Among the Orders identified by CEI are the Court’s determinations of October 20, 1980 and October 31, 1980, 538 F.Supp. 1306, wherein the Court, in granting in pertinent part the defendant’s motions for a directed verdict pursuant to Rule 50(a), Fed.R.Civ.P., concluded, as a matter of law, that insufficient evidence had been adduced to support a number of the plaintiff’s substantive claims. The City has responded in opposition to the instant motion.

The Court observes preliminarily that comparatively little authority exists, in both reported cases and learned treatises, upon the status at a retrial of those issues which were the subject of dispositive rulings by the court at the original trial and which therefore were not in issue at the time the case was submitted to the original jury. There is, however, no dispute either among the authorities or between the instant parties, that all issues actually submitted to the *1330 jury at the previous trial may be retried de novo. Further, it is uniformly agreed that a mistrial does not affect or invalidate any of the pretrial proceedings in the case. Therefore, the precise concern of this Court is with the viability at the retrial of certain authoritative dispositions propounded during the preceding trial of this action.

In opposing the instant motion, the City contends that a mistrial is “equivalent to no trial”, leaving the parties entirely free to relitigate even those matters which were the subject of dispositive rulings in the course of the initial trial. The City urges in particular that it is fully entitled to redeterminations of those rulings which were in any way premised upon the state of evidence at the time of their issuance in that new evidence could, at least conceivably, be introduced which might warrant a departure from the Court’s previous determinations. In advancing this contention, the City does not allege that it was denied a full and fair opportunity at the first trial to adduce evidence in support of its various substantive claims. It would appear instead that, in seeking to relitigate the matters which were specifically resolved in the first trial, the City is simply petitioning the Court for an opportunity to accomplish at the retrial that which it was unable to accomplish in the course of the earlier proceeding. The City’s insistence upon relitigating previously determined issues ensues notwithstanding the fact that the plaintiff virtually concedes that the overwhelming majority of the Court’s original rulings will, if reconsidered in the course of the retrial, ultimately be reaffirmed. And while the City vaguely suggests that new evidence may be introduced at the retrial which might induce the Court to alter or modify certain of its prior dispositions, the plaintiff has made no effort to apprise the Court of the nature and extent of such evidence, the manner in which the evidence might impact upon the Court’s former determinations, or the reasons underlying the City’s failure to present the evidence in question at the first trial. The plaintiff nonetheless maintains that adherence to the dispositive rulings rendered in the course of the original trial would constitute an inappropriate application of the “law of the case” doctrine which, the City asserts, is purely an appellate principle.

Existing legal precedent quite clearly fails to support the City’s foregoing contentions. The case of Remco, Inc. v. Faber Brothers, Inc., 34 F.R.D. 259 (N.D.Ill.1964) is particularly instructive. In that action, the plaintiff, following the district court’s declaration of a mistrial, sought to retry a Sherman Act count which had been dismissed at the first trial pursuant to Fed.R. Civ.P. 41(b) for insufficiency of evidence. In concluding that the plaintiff was not entitled to relitigate the previously dismissed count, Judge Hubert Will, in his well-reasoned opinion, stated:

Plaintiff reasons that, a mistrial having often been said to be no trial at all, the retrial is a de novo litigation of all elements of the previous trial. This neglects to recognize the fact that the decision which the jury was not able to reach — the impasse which necessitates the retrial of this action — related only to the counts still in the case at the time the jury was sent out to deliberate.
The Sherman Act count was held to be invalid as a matter of law. That ruling was based on the insufficiency of plaintiff’s evidence. The second trial is not intended to afford either party an opportunity to fortify a position it was unable to maintain in the previous trial. The second trial is limited to a presentation of evidence on issues upon which the jury at the first trial was unable to agree. The retrial is the result of a deadlock upon certain issues submitted to the jury and is thus limited to those issues. 34 F.R.D. at 260.

The opinion in Remco recognizes that the fundamental purpose of a retrial is to afford a new jury an opportunity to reach a final disposition of only those issues which were left unresolved by the failure of the original jury to agree upon a verdict. That is to say, a mistrial occasioned by the jury’s inability to arrive at a verdict does not convert those matters which were pre *1331 viously the subject of dispositive rulings by the trial court to matters the litigants are free to relitigate de novo in the second trial. Stated differently, a retrial is not designed “to afford either party an opportunity to fortify a position it was unable to maintain at the previous trial.” Id. Accord, Souza v. Corvick, 441 F.2d 1013, 1017-1019 n.6 (D.C. Cir.1970). To hold otherwise would subject parties at a retrial to either futile litigation to foregone conclusions or to confusing inconsistencies in the rulings of the Court. Of at least equal significance, a contrary result would ignore the established principle that a litigant is generally entitled to but a single opportunity to present and prevail upon his claim; a principle which is fundamental to our system of jurisprudence. 1

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City of Cleveland v. Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., 538 F. Supp. 1328 (N.D. Ohio 1981).

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