McInnis v. Town of Weston
| Decision Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 3:03CV1803(JBA). |
| Citation | 458 F.Supp.2d 7 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
| Parties | Dann McINNIS, Plaintiff, v. TOWN OF WESTON and Anthony Land, Defendants. |
Harold R. Burke, Victoria de Toledo, Casper & de Toledo, Stamford, CT, for Plaintiff.
Martha Anne Shaw, Michael J. Rose, Howd & Ludorf, Hartford, CT, for Defendants.
RULING ON POST-TRIAL MOTIONS
On October 14, 2005, a jury returned a verdict finding that plaintiff Dann Mclnnis ("Mclnnis"), a police officer employed by the Town of Weston, had been retaliated against for making an age discrimination complaint to Weston Police Chief Anthony Land ("Land"), and awarding $4,200 in economic damages, $4,200 in liquidated damages for wilfulness, and $960,000 in compensatory damages, reduced by $100,000 for failure to mitigate.1 See Verdict Form [Doc. # 120]. Defendants have moved for relief from judgment, judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, or remittitur. Plaintiff opposes these motions and seeks attorney fees and costs. For the reasons that follow, defendants' motion for a new trial will be granted unless plaintiff accepts a remittitur of $710,000 of the noneconomic damages award, and accepts non-economic damages of $150,000. Defendants' other motions will be denied. Plaintiffs motions for costs and attorney fees will be granted in part and denied in part.
Defendant moves for relief from judgment pursuant to Rule 60(b) and also renews its motion for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(b), on the grounds that the jury's verdict on whether Mclnnis proved an adverse employment action was inconsistent, and the evidence did not support the conclusion that Mclnnis suffered such action.
Judgment as a matter of law may be rendered only if "there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party on that issue ...." Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a)(1). A renewed Rule 50(b) motion will be granted "only if the evidence, drawing all inferences in favor of the non-moving party and giving deference to all credibility determinations of the jury, is insufficient to permit a reasonable juror to find in h[is] favor." Lavin-McEleney v. Marist College, 239 F.3d 476, 479 (2d Cir.2001). Thus, "judgment as a matter of law should not be granted unless (1) there is such a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury's findings could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture, or (2) there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the movant that reasonable and fair minded [persons] could not arrive at a verdict against [it]." Id. at 480 (quoting DiSanto v. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 220 F.3d 61, 64 (2d Cir.2000) (per curiam)). A movant under Rule 50 "faces a high bar." Id. at 479.
Rule 60(b) provides that a court may relieve a party from a final judgment for one of six reasons: "(1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; (2) newly discovered evidence ...; (3) fraud ...; (4) the judgment is void; (5) the judgment has been satisfied ...; or (6) any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment." Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b). United States v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, 247 F.3d 370, 391 (2d Cir.2001) (internal citations omitted). Defendants have not specified on which subsection of Rule 60(b) they predicate their motion, and they have not argued mistake by the parties, newly discovered evidence, fraud, or satisfaction of the judgment. "A judgment is void under Rule 60(b)(4) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure only if the court that rendered it lacked jurisdiction of the subject matter, or of the parties, or if it acted in a manner inconsistent with due process of law." Grace v. Bank Leumi Trust Co. of N.Y., 443 F.3d 180, 193 (2d Cir.2006) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted). Defendants do not argue that the Court lacked jurisdiction or violated principles of due process. Thus the only remaining ground for relief would be Rule 60(b)(6), the catchall provision.
In both their Rule 50 and Rule 60 motions, defendants argue that the jury found that Mclnnis had not been subjected to an adverse employment action, and therefore plaintiff failed to prove an essential element of the retaliation claim on which the jury found in his favor. Because the jury's verdict can be interpreted consistently with its other findings and the evidence, the Court finds no basis for setting it aside.
Two separate claims were submitted to the jury: age discrimination and retaliation. The verdict form separated the two claims into separate sections on two separate pages. See Verdict Form [Doc. # 120]. Under "Age Discrimination," the jury was asked, "Do you find that the plaintiff, Dann Mclnnis, has proved that he was subjected to adverse employment action by the defendant, Town of Weston?" The jury checked "No," and therefore also checked "No" for the second question, whether the Town of Weston discriminated against plaintiff on the basis of age. On the next page, under the heading "Retaliation," the jury was asked whether Mclnnis "reasonably believed in good faith he had been subjected to age discrimination by the defendant when he made his complaints of age discrimination," which the jury answered, "Yes," and then they also answered "Yes," to the question whether "plaintiff has proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant, the Town of Weston, retaliated against him because he complained of age discrimination."
The jury was instructed that to find in favor of plaintiff on the retaliation claim, they would be required to find that he suffered an adverse employment action:
To prove a claim for retaliation, Mr. Mclnnis must prove each of the following elements:
(1) That he was engaged in statutorily-protected activity. To establish participation in protected activity, Mr Mclnnis need only show that he was acting under a good faith, reasonable belief that the defendant's actions violated the law against age discrimination.
(2) That the alleged retaliator, Chief Anthony Land, knew that Mr. Mclnnis had complained about illegal age discrimination.
(3) That an adverse decision or course of action (as defined on page 1[8]) was taken against Mr. Mclnnis.
(4) That a causal connection exists between the protected activity and the adverse action.
See Jury Instructions [Doc. # 117] at 18, 23.2
While the jury was not asked again about adverse employment action as a separate interrogatory under the retaliation claim, the jurors were clearly instructed that an adverse employment action is an element of such a claim.
Contrary to defendants' argument, it was not inherently inconsistent for the jury to find that Mclnnis did not suffer an adverse employment action in connection with the claimed age discrimination but that he did suffer an adverse employment action later during the course of defendants' retaliation. These two claims related to different periods of time. Plaintiffs age discrimination claim centered around various age-biased comments made by Land over a period of years since the 1990s; Land's disparate treatment of other older officers in the police department, including disparate imposition of discipline; as well as fellow officer Daubert's refusal to provide—and Land's refusal to insure— adequate backup.3 Plaintiffs evidence of retaliation, however, centered on the time period after November 7, 2002, when Mclnnis wrote to Land that he felt he had been discriminated against based on his age, leading to the series of Internal Affairs investigations which culminated in two suspensions of Mclnnis in June and July 2003. Therefore, the jury consistently could have concluded that plaintiff suffered no adverse employment action before November 2002, but did suffer one after that date.
In their September 30, 2005 motion for judgment as a matter of law (filed shortly before trial and after plaintiff amended his complaint to delete his failure-to-promote claim), defendants took the position that plaintiff would not be able to prove he suffered an adverse employment action because of his age, but "concede[d] that both suspensions [in June and July 2003] constitute adverse employment actions" that were connected with plaintiffs retaliation claim. Def. Mem. in Support of Mot. to Dismiss/Mot. for Judgment as Matter of Law [Doc. # 96-2] at 3, n. 2. Defendants also conceded as much in their earlier summary judgment briefing. See Mclnnis v. Town of Weston, 375 F.Supp.2d 70, 85 (D.Conn.2005). Their proposed verdict form acknowledged that the suspensions constituted adverse employment actions, and suggested asking the jury only whether the suspensions were imposed "because of plaintiffs complaints of age discrimination. See Def. Proposed Jury Instructions [Doc. # 98] at 13. In his closing argument, defendants' attorney argued that plaintiff had not put forth evidence that an adverse employment action was taken against Mclnnis because of age, but he did not make the same argument with regard to the retaliation count. See Trial Transcript ("Tr.") at 1266-67, 1269. Thus, before and during trial, defendants never challenged the sufficiency of plaintiffs adverse employment action evidence with respect to the retaliation claim and they acknowledged that the two suspensions in 2003, which plaintiff claimed were retaliatory, were adverse employment actions. They raised the sufficiency of plaintiffs adverse employment action evidence only with respect to the age discrimination claim, which centered on different factual allegations. For this reason the Court...
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