Belton v. Fibreboard Corp.
| Decision Date | 09 February 1984 |
| Docket Number | No. 82-2446,82-2446 |
| Citation | 724 F.2d 500 |
| Parties | 14 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1825 Jack BELTON and John Crochet, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. FIBREBOARD CORPORATION, et al., Defendants, Pittsburgh Corning Corporation, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Gordon R. Pate, Joe Michael Dodson, Beaumont, Tex., Don Martinson, Dallas, Tex., for defendant-appellant.
Walter Umphrey, Joseph R. Steele, Port Arthur, Tex., for Belton.
Marlin Thompson, Paul D. Henderson, Orange, Tex., for Crochet.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Before POLITZ, JOHNSON and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
The threshold of this appeal concerns the admissibility of evidence of settlement agreements and the permissible boundaries of fair judicial comment to the jury. 1 Concluding that the trial court erred by admitting evidence of the amount of pre-trial settlements by a number of co-defendants, and by expressing its opinion on the amount of damages, we reverse and remand for a new trial.
The facts are undisputed. The plaintiffs, Jack Belton and John Crochet, filed this diversity action against appellant Pittsburgh Corning and fifteen other defendants, alleging that their exposure to asbestos-containing products manufactured by the defendants caused them to develop asbestos-related diseases. Prior to trial, Belton settled with fifteen defendants for $259,843.88; Crochet settled with thirteen defendants for $145,398.42. Pittsburgh Corning, the appellant here, was left as the only non-settling defendant.
At a pre-trial conference, the district court ruled that if Pittsburgh offered evidence of the plaintiffs' exposure to the products of the fifteen settling defendants, then the plaintiffs could explain to the jury that the other defendants were not at trial because they had theretofore settled out of court. Pittsburgh indicated, at a point during plaintiffs' opening statement, that it did intend to offer evidence of plaintiffs' exposure to the products of the previously settling defendants. The case proceeded to trial on a theory of strict liability. During opening statements, counsel for Belton and Crochet advised the jury that fifteen of the original defendants had settled prior to trial. The record reveals that the jury heard conflicting evidence as to the severity of Belton's and Crochet's injuries.
At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial court instructed the jury not to consider the settlement in its deliberations:
[T]he Court would charge you that you are not to permit the question of settlement of the Plaintiffs prior to the trial of this case, as to affect you in any way in regard to the liability that the Defendant has in regard to damages to the Plaintiff. You will not consider the settlement made by the Plaintiffs with other Defendants in any regard. But, the Court would instruct you that you are to give full consideration to the damages the Plaintiffs have sustained as if they were suing only the Defendant, Pittsburgh Corning Corporation. In other words, you will award the Plaintiffs the full damages which you find that they have sustained as a result of their asbestosis condition or their illness as a result of the exposure to asbestos products. You will not reduce or diminish or deduct any monies for any settlement that they might have made for other Defendants, because this will be a matter that the Court will be required to pass upon. Any amount that you would award the Plaintiffs as damages, the Court would have to make such adjustments and reduce the amount by the previous settlements.
These are matters to be handled by the Court. So, the fair way for you to award damages would be to award full damages to the Plaintiffs for all of the injuries that you find that they have sustained and all of the compensation that they are entitled to receive for their asbestosis illness, and not be effected or influenced in any way by any previous settlement. Or to make any deductions or reduce the amount by whatever settlement you might anticipate that they might have made, because this is a matter for the Court's consideration and for the Court's action and the Court, of course, will take care of that situation.
The jury returned a unanimous verdict awarding Belton $25,000 and Crochet $75,000. The Court did not accept the verdict but instead asked:
(All Jurors indicating, "Yes".)
THE COURT: Well, the reason the Court is telling you, because we like to give effect to the verdict of the Jury. We would like for their will to prevail, and of course, this would be a useless effort if the Court accepted this verdict in the manner in which you have returned it, because the Plaintiffs would not--they would get zero and they wouldn't get anything.
The Court would therefore tell you there are some fifteen defendants have already settled with the Plaintiffs, and as I say, the amount of money that they have settled for would exceed the amount of money that you have found in this case against the Defendant. The law would require the Court to deduct the amount of settlement that has been made, so these Plaintiffs would not get anything.
If you wish to go back and reconsider and consider the case as the Court advised you may do originally yesterday when we gave you the charge, and also this morning, consider it as if none of the defendants have--that Pittsburgh Corning is one, and that no settlements have been made from any of them, that there was only one party, then adjudge the damages in accordance with what you find the injuries to be worth in dollars and cents that the Plaintiffs are afflicted with or have sustained, disregarding any other settlements.
Now, do you wish to do that? Do you wish to return to the Jury Room and begin your deliberations for that purpose? The Court will permit you to do so if you wish to.
THE FOREMAN: Yes.
The record reveals that appellant's counsel interrupted this exchange and moved that the trial court receive the jury's verdict. The trial court denied this motion, going on to further instruct the jury that:
The Court knows of no other way to do this, other than for you to reconsider the amount of damages, disregarding the other defendants and the settlements, because the Court would have to deduct those under the law. So, we are not at liberty to tell you what those are, or we would. So, the only way the Court can advise you, the only fair way that you can award damages to the Plaintiffs, is to consider what you think their injuries are worth in dollars and cents, disregarding any previous settlements by other defendants.
Now, in addition to that, if you wish to indicate on the verdict after finding the amount of damages, that you think they are entitled to, if you wish to also indicate that we think that certain proportions of this amount of damages that we find that the Plaintiffs is entitled to receive should be adjudged against this Defendant. Do you understand what I'm saying? In other words, if you would say in percentages or the amounts that should be adjudged against these defendants, you just have to write that into the verdict underneath it, saying that we feel that a certain percentage of this amount should be adjudged against the Defendant, Pittsburgh Corning, either in the amount or the percentage.
At this point, appellant's counsel objected again to no avail. The jury then retired and returned with a second signed unanimous verdict awarding Belton $125,000 and Crochet $275,000. The trial court once again refused to accept the jury verdict, and instead decided to tell the jury the amount that each plaintiff had received in settlement from the other defendants:
Now, in view of the efforts that you have made, I feel that the Court should give you the information of the settlement made with the defendants who have settled in this case, in the event that you would like to reconsider your verdict.
The total amounts of settlement received by the Plaintiff, Jack Belton, from fifteen defendants, is Two Hundred Fifty-Nine Thousand Eight Hundred Forty-Three Dollars and Eighty-Eight Cents, ($259,843.88). If the Court accepted this verdict of $125,000, the Court would have to deduct the $259,843.88 from $125,000, which you could not deduct.
Now, if you had indicated, as you did in your first verdict, that you wish the Plaintiff, Belton, to receive $25,000 from the Defendants, Pittsburgh Corning, and the Plaintiff, Crochet, $75,000 from the Defendant, Pittsburgh Corning, then, of course, the effect of your verdict is to allow nothing for Mr. Belton. As to Mr. Crochet, thirteen defendants have paid a total of One Hundred and Forty-Five Thousand Three Hundred and Eighty-Nine Dollars and Forty-Two Cents ($145,389.42). So, you could deduct $145,389.42 from $275,000 and you would arrive at One Hundred Thirty Thousand Dollars ($130,000), which your verdict would award Mr. Crochet some damages.
Now, I feel that in all fairness, since you have indicated originally that you wished the Plaintiff to recover in the amount that you...
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...(Browning, J.)(same). Courts have admitted settlement evidence for these purposes under different circumstances. In Belton v. Fibreboard Corp., 724 F.2d 500 (5th Cir. 1984), for example, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit approved a trial court's "admission of the evid......
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