Inmate wins retaliation appeal

This case involved a New York state inmate who claimed that correction officers beat the hell out of him in retaliation for filing a series of internal grievances about being manhandled and pat-frisked unnecessarily. One grievance contained language that threatened the officers if the mistreatment occurred again. Some officers then approached plaintiff in his cell to interview him about the grievances and undertook a pat frisk. According to plaintiff, this turned into an altercation in which plaintiff was punched without justification, they banged his head into a metal desk, and shoved an object into his rectum, stating, "this is what happens when you send letters up front threatening officers." The case went to trial and the jury found in plaintiff's favor on the retaliation claim but not the excessive force claim. The Court of Appeals sustains the verdict.

The case is Hundley v. Frunzi, a summary order issued on August 21. The case went to trial in the Western District of New York. The jury awarded plaintiff $20,000 for pain and suffering and $80,000 in punitive damages. The state argues the retaliation verdict is bad because it conflicts with the excessive force verdict. As the Court of Appeals puts it:

On appeal, Defendants challenge only the district court’s denial of their motion for a new trial on the retaliation claim. They argue that they are entitled to a new trial because the jury’s split verdicts on the excessive force and retaliation claims are “ineluctably inconsistent.” Specifically, Defendants assert that a jury finding that they did not use excessive force during the incident is equivalent to a finding that they acted in good faith in their use of force, and, therefore, that their actions during the incident could not have been retaliatory in nature.

The Second Circuit (Bianco, Perez and Nathan) says the verdicts were not inconsistent. There are two ways the jury could have threaded this needle. 

"First, the jury instructions did not limit the alleged 'adverse action' underlying Hundley’s retaliation claim to the alleged assault by Defendants that resulted in his broken rib, but rather included any conduct by Defendants during the December 20 incident with Hundley that met the applicable legal standard." This means that even if the use of force was not really excessive, the jury could have found that other aspects of the incident were retaliatory, such as the pat-frisk (which took place just prior to the use of force) that did not result in any injuries.

Second, the jury was able to find that the use of force was not malicious (which is why the jury did not enter a plaintiff's verdict on the excessive force claim) but was still retaliatory. "The jury could have found that defendants did use some degree of unnecessary force against Hundley during the cell visit to retaliate against him for filing a grievance, but did not intend to 'inflict injury' and did not commit 'a wrongful act with extreme or excessive cruelty,' and that Hundley’s rib was broken when the retaliatory plan unintentionally got out of control and Hundley fell to the ground. If the jury made those factual findings, it could have rationally concluded under the instructions that Defendants were liable for retaliation, but not excessive force."

This is as nuanced a holding as you can get. It tells us that the Court of Appeals strives to respect jury verdicts and will examine the evidence in a manner that attempts (reasonably) to reconcile competing verdicts.