The case is Ali v. Kipp, decided on May 22. Plaintiff went for a car ride with a buddy, who rammed the car into another vehicle and fled on foot. When the police arrived, they did not believe plaintiff was not driving, and they arrested him and bought him to the station where, he claims, the officer grabbed him by his neck, his back and ripped his clothing as he lifted plaintiff up off the ground. Plaintiff -- who also claimed the officer slammed him into the cell bars -- was left bloody and unconscious and went to the hospital. At trial, the jury said plaintiff was a victim of excessive force, so he won on liability, but the jury gave him no money, which is an all-around bummer. Plaintiff appeals, claiming he could not have proven excessive force without being able to recover any money. That makes some sense, but the trial court found a way to reconcile the liability verdict with the $0.00 damages award, and the Court of Appeals agrees.
Not all liability verdicts produce damages awards. Some people are legally injured but not factually injured. The trial court said that "a reasonable jury could have credited Ali's testimony that [officer] Kipp 'grabbed him by the neck and pants and dragged him to the holding cell, ripping his boxers in teh process, and concluded that the amount of force used was excessive,' while rejecting Ali's testimony about Kipp slamming his head into the cell wall and bars."
The Court of Appeals (Cabranes, Livingston and Carney) quotes from Justice Brandeis: "appellate courts should be slow to impute to juries a disregard of their duties, and to trial courts a want of diligence or perspicacity in appraising the jury's verdict." This means that juries are presumed to follow the jury instructions and trial courts are presumed to know what they are doing. When the appellate court has an apparent inconsistency like this case, it tries to reconcile the jury's decisionmaking. The Court reasons:
Even if the jury found that Sergeant Kipp used excessive force while placing Ali in the cell, that was not necessarily the end of its fact‐finding. Rather, the District Court instructed the jury that, before it could award damages, it also had to find that any excessive force used by Sergeant Kipp was the proximate cause of Ali’s “injury or injuries.”And in the event that the jury found that only some of Ali’s injuries were caused by Kipp’s use of excessive force, the jury was directed to “award compensatory damages only for those injuries that [it] find[s] the plaintiff has proven . . . to have been the result of conduct by the defendant in violation of the law.”
Even if the jury found that Sergeant Kipp used excessive force while placing Ali in the cell, that was not necessarily the end of its fact‐finding. Rather, the District Court instructed the jury that, before it could award damages, it also had to find that any excessive force used by Sergeant Kipp was the proximate cause of Ali’s “injury or injuries.”45 And in the event that the jury found that only some of Ali’s injuries were caused by Kipp’s use of excessive force, the jury was directed to “award compensatory damages only for those injuries that [it] find[s] the plaintiff has proven . . . to have been the result of conduct by the defendant in violation of the law.”
In light of these proper and thorough jury instructions, we have no difficulty identifying “a view of the case . . . that resolves any seeming inconsistency.”The jury heard two different accounts of what transpired when Sergeant Kipp placed Ali in the cell. According to Ali, the entire incident was marked by violence—from Sergeant Kipp grabbing Ali’s neck and ripping Ali’s boxers on the way to the cell, to his slamming Ali’s head into the cell wall and bars once inside the cell. Sergeant Kipp, on the other hand, testified that all he did was “guide[ ]” an inebriated Ali to the cell, pull him inside, and repeatedly sit him down on a bench—after which, Kipp said, Ali injured himself.
The jury was free to conclude that the truth lay somewhere between these two versions of the relevant events. It could have credited Ali’s testimony that Sergeant Kipp used excessive force when he brought Ali to the holding cell, but concluded that Ali suffered only de minimis injuries from the treatment. That finding would not have foreclosed the jury from also crediting Kipp’s testimony that Ali caused his own head injuries, either by slamming his own head into the wall or by falling off the cell’s bench head‐first.
Under this view of the case, the award of no compensatory damages was proper, for the jury was not to “simply award compensatory damages for any injury suffered by the plaintiff from any cause.”
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