Cygnar v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 30 December 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85 C 5902.,85 C 5902.
• Citation: 652 F. Supp. 287
• Parties: Gerald CYGNAR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

652 F. Supp. 287

Gerald CYGNAR, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants.

No. 85 C 5902.

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, E.D.

December 30, 1986.

John Gubbins, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs.

Jonathan Siner, Arthur Christie, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Chicago, Ill., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

SHADUR, District Judge.

City of Chicago ("City") and former Executive Director Raleigh Mathis ("Mathis") of the Office of Municipal Investigation ("OMI") have brought post-trial motions under Fed.R.Civ.P. ("Rules") 49(b), 50(b) and 59(e). They seek alternatively to set aside the judgment, to enter judgment in their favor notwithstanding the verdict, to obtain a new trial or to reduce damages, in each instance seeking to upset the aggregate $4.29 million judgment awarded under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ("Section 1983") to 13 white Chicago police officers transferred out of OMI. For the reasons stated in this memorandum opinion and order, defendants' motions are granted in part and denied in part, while final ruling must be deferred in part.

Despite some really substantial disparities in proof among the plaintiffs, the jury's verdict for each was identical: $55,000 in compensatory and $275,000 in punitive damages (the latter against Mathis alone), in each instance 10% more than plaintiffs' lawyer had asked.¹ And as to each plaintiff — including those who had engaged in no overt political activity at all and as to whom there was no evidence whatsoever that Mathis could have known of the plaintiff's political preferences — the jury answered "yes" to each of two special interrogatories:

1. Was Raleigh Mathis' decision to reassign any of the following plaintiffs out of the Office of Municipal Investigations substantially motivated by the political affiliations of that plaintiff?

2. Was Raleigh Mathis' decision to reassign any of the following plaintiffs out of the Office of Municipal Investigations substantially motivated by the race of that plaintiff?

As to each plaintiff, the jury answered "no" to a third special interrogatory:

3. If you have found either the political affiliation or race, or both, of any plaintiff was or were a substantially motivating factor or factors in Raleigh Mathis' decision to reassign that plaintiff, would Raleigh Mathis have reached the same decision to reassign that plaintiff even in the absence of that plaintiff's political affiliation and even without reference to that plaintiff's race?

Finally the jury answered "yes" to the fourth interrogatory — again as to each plaintiff:

4. Do you find that Raleigh Mathis' decision to reassign plaintiff out of O.M.I., to the extent it was substantially motivated by the intent to discriminate against plaintiff because of his race, was perceived by Mathis as a means to correct what he considered a previously-existing racial imbalance within O.M.I.?

Standards of Review

Very different standards apply to judgments notwithstanding the verdict and new trials. Van Houdnos v. Evans, 807 F.2d 648, 650 (7th Cir.1986) marks merely the most recent, rather than any new, expression of the former set of criteria:

By directing verdicts for defendants, the district judge necessarily found that plaintiff had not produced enough evidence about those events, even when viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff's position, to allow the jury to make a reasonable finding in plaintiff's favor. That is the standard by which directed verdicts and judgments notwithstanding jury verdicts are judged. The district judge must determine "whether the evidence presented, combined with all the reasonable inferences permissibly drawn therefrom, is sufficient to support the verdict when viewed in a light most favorable to the party against whom the motion is directed." Tice v. Lampert Yards, Inc., 761 F.2d 1210, 1213 (7th Cir.1985); Benson v. Allphin, 786 F.2d 268, 279 (7th Cir.) ("The standard for granting a directed verdict is very generous to the nonmovant."), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 107 S.Ct. 172, 93 L.Ed.2d 109 (1986). The district judge is not permitted to resolve conflicts in the testimony or weigh and evaluate the evidence. These functions are reserved for the jury. See, e.g., Continental Casualty Co. v. Howard, 775 F.2d 876, 879 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 106 S.Ct. 1641, 90 L.Ed.2d 186 (1986).

Nevertheless, the district judge must determine whether "the evidence, taken as a whole, provides a sufficient probative basis upon which a jury could reasonably reach a verdict, without `speculation over legally unfounded claims.'" Panter v. Marshall Field & Co., 646 F.2d 271, 281 (7th Cir.) (quoting Brady v. Southern Railway, 320 U.S. 476, 480, 64 S.Ct. 232, 234, 88 L.Ed. 239 (1943)), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 1092, 102 S.Ct. 658, 70 L.Ed.2d 631 (1981). As the Supreme Court recognized long ago:

A mere scintilla of evidence is not enough to require the submission of an issue to the jury. The decisions establish a more reasonable rule "that in every case, before the evidence is left in the jury, there is a preliminary question for the judge, not whether there is literally no evidence, but whether there is any upon which a jury can properly proceed to find a verdict for the party producing it, upon whom the onus of proof is imposed."

Gunning v. Cooley, 281 U.S. 90, 94, 50 S.Ct. 231, 233, 74 L.Ed. 720 (1930) (quoting Improvement Co. v. Munson, 81 U.S. (14 Wall.) 442, 448, 20 L.Ed. 867 (1871) (footnote omitted)); Hohmann v. Packard Instrument Co., 471 F.2d 815, 819 (7th Cir.1973).

This District Court's former Chief Judge William Campbell, sitting by designation and concurring in Van Houdnos, id. at 657 took the occasion to add:

I am in full agreement with the opinion. I write merely to echo my concern, so aptly expressed by one of my colleagues, that juries in § 1983 cases are becoming like law clerks, handing their recommendations to the judge who then does as he sees fit. As a district judge since 1940, I have great confidence in the jury system. I am alarmed by what I sense to be an increased prevalence of directed verdicts against prevailing plaintiffs in § 1983 actions. In my opinion, this case represents a less-known but equally dangerous brand of "judicial activism," and our reversal here should serve as a warning or lesson concerning the precariousness of such activism.

Motions for new trials involve a less demanding standard. Judge Campbell's predecessor as Chief Judge of our District Court, Honorable John Barnes, was wont to refer to himself as sitting as the "thirteenth juror."² To the extent that implies substitution of the judge's view for those of the jury, it is of course not an accurate description of the process. Instead the court, in acting on a new-trial motion, is called on to determine whether the verdict is against the clear weight of the evidence, somewhere in between the judgment n.o.v. test and a straight second-guessing of what the jury has done. General Foam Fabricators, Inc. v. Tenneco Chemicals, Inc., 695 F.2d 281, 288 (7th Cir.1982), quoting from the even lesser statement of the standard ("against the weight of the evidence, ... the damages are excessive, or ... for other reasons, the trial was not fair to the party moving") in Montgomery Ward & Co. v. Duncan, 311 U.S. 243, 251, 61 S.Ct. 189, 194, 85 L.Ed. 147 (1940).

Finally and relatedly, the standards for reviewing the size of a jury award are relevant here. As for compensatory damages, In re Innovative Construction Systems, Inc., 793 F.2d 875, 887-88 (7th Cir. 1986) (citations omitted) recently described the test this way:

Only if the award is "monstrously excessive," ... a product of passion and prejudice, ... or if there is no rational connection between it and the evidence, ... may the court disturb it. Underlying this deference to a jury's assessment of damages is the acknowledgement that "the actual measure of damages is an exercise in fact-finding," ... and any rule on the scope of the judge's control of the jury has Seventh Amendment implications.

Innovative Construction, id. at 887 n. 11 and, even more recently, In re Air Crash Disaster Near Chicago, Illinois on May 25, 1979 (Lux v. McDonnell Douglas Corp.), 803 F.2d 304, 318 n. 12 (7th Cir. 1986) also point up the need for comparability in damage awards among similar cases.

It must however be said, as Judge Campbell's Van Houdnos concurrence suggests, that the decisions often give more lip service than real effect to the deferential kind of statement exemplified by Innovative Construction. This subject will be dealt with at some length later in this opinion.

As for punitive damages, now-familiar doctrine in Section 1983 actions teaches they are not awardable unless the individual "defendant's conduct is shown to be motivated by evil motive or intent, or ... involves reckless or callous indifference to the federally protected rights of others" (Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 56, 103 S.Ct. 1625, 1640, 75 L.Ed.2d 632 (1983)).³ Because such damages are specifically devised to punish — to "send a message" to the individual governmental officer (for they cannot legally be awarded at all against City) — a court reviewing an award of punitive damages should be at least as sensitive to the kinds of considerations identified in Innovative Construction as it is in considering compensatory damages.

One last consideration should be identified at the outset: Section 1983 is not a generalized guaranty of fairness in employee relations. Governmental employers may be mistaken and even arbitrary in dealing with their employees. They may (as Mathis was accused of here) break promises that no early (or wholesale) personnel changes will take place. But governmental defendants will not be subject to federal liability unless their conduct masks constitutionally forbidden mistreatment (such as politically-or racially-motivated mistreatment). Even though the jury instructions in this case sought to deliver...