Monthly Archives: August 2010

The blog takes great pride in being as neutral as possible on legal issues and court opinions – Sarelson Law Firm (unlike most employment law firms) represents both employees and employers in employment disputes and avoids ideological based representation. But the Eleventh Circuit issued an unpublished opinion yesterday that really bothers me. The case is Ash v. Tyson Foods, and the blog has previously discussed the case the last time the Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion in the case.
The case is a race discrimination case under 42 U.S.C. s. 1981. In the original trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the employee and awarded both compensatory and punitive damages. The trial judge granted the employer’s motion for a directed verdict – i.e., the judge overruled the jury’s decision and entered a verdict fo the employer. The employee, who won (at least according to the jury), successfully appealed to the Eleventh Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit correctly ruled that there was evidence to support the jury verdict, and thus the trial judge was wrong to overrule the jury.
Despite this initial ruling, the Eleventh Circuit also affirmed the trial judge to the extent there was insufficient evidence to support the award of punitive damages.
When the case was remanded to the trial judge, the case was retried on both liability and damages. (Frankly the blog is confused as to why there was even a retrial — the jury’s original verdict should have been reinstated and a trial on punitive damages, if warranted and wanted by the plaintiff, should have been approriate).
At the second trial, a different jury again found in favor of the plaintiff and again awarded substantial compensatory and punitive damages. The employer made the same motion to the judge to have the judge overrule the jury’s verdict. This time the trial judge — no doubt taking his cue from being reversed by the Eleventh Circuit the last time – denied the motion and entered judgment in favor of the plaintiff.
Plaintiff won two jury trials and the first ruling on liability was already affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit. Case closed, right? Nope.
This time the employer again appealed making the exact same argument to the appellate court that was rejected the first time – namely, the failure of any evidence to support the jury’s finding in favor of the employee.
As luck would have it, this time the Eleventh Circuit agreed with the employer, and again reversed the trial judge but in the exact opposite direction. Poor trial judge. The first time he ruled for the employer and was reversed. The second time he ruled for the employee on the exact same legal issue and the court of appeals reversed him again this time in favor of the employer.
The decision, despite being fairly lengthly, detailed and controversial, was “unpublished” by the Eleventh Circuit. This means the court does not want its own opinion to be binding in future cases. The case was also issued “per curiam,” which means no one judge wishes to have his or her name associated with preparing the opinion. A visiting trial judge sitting by designation wrote a simple but strong dissent that got it exactly right — two different juries found in favor of the employee and awarded compensatory and punitive damages.
Call me old fashioned but I take the Seventh Amendment’s right to a jury trial seriously. The blog hopes the case is reheard en banc and perhaps petitioned to the Supreme Court if necessary.
The case is here:
Ash v. Tyson Foods
After years of fighting, it appears this Tyson’s chicken is fully roasted.