Opinion
01 Civ. 10137 (LAK).
September 23, 2004
ORDER
Plaintiffs, one of which owned the long idle and derelict Thunderbolt roller coaster at Coney Island, brought this action claiming that former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani caused the City of New York to tear down the Thunderbolt without affording plaintiffs notice or an opportunity to be heard. He allegedly did so out of racial animus, to retaliate for a prior lawsuit against the City, and to accommodate the owners of the New York Mets. To summarize the ultimate outcome, plaintiff Wantanabe Realty Corp. alone prevailed against the City alone, but only on a claim of common law trespass and only for nominal damages of $1 together with prejudgment interest, for a total recovery of $1.29. The matter is now before the Court on plaintiffs' motion for judgment as a matter of law in the amount of $3,148,424 or, in the alternative, for a new damages trial before a different judge and for other relief.
The roller coaster had been inactive since approximately 1983. Cpt. ¶ 40.
Before proceeding to the merits of the motion, it is well to note that this case consumed an extraordinary amount of court time. Discovery was protracted and contentious. At the conclusion of discovery, the Court granted in part and denied in part defendants' motion for summary judgment in a lengthy opinion. Wantanabe v. City of New York, 315 F. Supp. 375 (S.D.N.Y. 2003). Trial was bifurcated into liability and, if necessary, damages phases. Generally speaking, the liability trial resulted in a verdict for plaintiff Wantanabe against the City and certain individual defendants on a claim of common law trespass and against one city official for denial of Wantanabe's right to substantive due process. On post-liability-trial motions, the Court dismissed, among other things, the substantive due process claim. See id. 2003 WL 22862646 (Dec. 3, 2003) (ruling on defendants' post-trial motions); id. 2003 WL 22293152 (Oct. 7, 2003) (ruling on plaintiffs' post-trial motions). The Court then held a three day Daubert hearing on the parties' in limine motions with respect to their respective proposed expert witnesses, granting in part and denying in part defendants' motion and denying plaintiffs. See id., 2004 WL 27720 (Jan. 5, 2004). Further evidentiary rulings resulted in written decisions during the damages trial, which alone consumed seven trial days. See id., 2004 WL 169751 (Jan. 28, 2004); id. 2004 WL 188088 (Feb. 2, 2004). At the conclusion of the damages trial, the jury returned a verdict which, among other things, found that plaintiff's long derelict roller coaster, immediately prior to its demolition, had no value and that its destruction did not diminish the fair market value of the land on which it stood. The Court therefore entered the judgment referred to above for nominal damages for the City's trespass.
See, e.g., Wantanabe v. City of New York, No. 01 Civ. 10137 (LAK), 2002 WL 31075822 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 18, 2002) (granting plaintiffs' motion to compel former Mayor Giuliani to return for completion of his deposition).
The description of the relief sought by plaintiff's post-trial motion occupies 18 pages of their notice of motion. But it may be dealt with summarily.
The Rule 50(b) Motion
Plaintiff seeks judgment as a matter of law in the amount of $3,148,424. This prayer must be denied for either of two (if not more) independently sufficient reasons. First, plaintiff never made a sufficient motion, pursuant to Rule 50(a), for judgment as a matter of law in its favor on the damages claim prior to submission of the case to the jury. It therefore cannot be heard to seek Rule 50(b) relief post-trial, as it does here. E.g., 9A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE: CIVIL 2D § 2537, at 335-36 (1995). Even if plaintiff had preserved the point, it would be utterly without merit. The argument depends upon the baseless assumption that the jury was obliged to accept as true the testimony of plaintiff's experts, all of which was sharply disputed by the defendants.
Plaintiff's papers claim otherwise. Pl. Mem. 4. The assertion, however, is not accurate. Plaintiff did not move for judgment as a matter of law at the close of all the evidence. Tr., Jan. 29, 2004, at 951. At the conclusion of the defense case, the Court, in order to avoid delaying the jury, announced that it would reserve on all the motions so that the plaintiff could begin its rebuttal case before the end of the day. Tr., Jan. 28, 2004, at 867. After the jury departed that evening, the Court inquired whether there were any motions at the close of the defendants' case. Plaintiff's counsel responded:
"MR. GEDAN: I make the standard motion, your Honor, that I think at this point plaintiff is entitled to a judgment of law on its damages claim."
The Court then inquired as to what he meant. Mr. Gedan said: "Frankly I didn't put that together yet. I don't want to take any more time to think about it, Judge. I just got through reading at high speed and it is not easy." Id. at 884. The Court then said that if what counsel intended was to seek judgment as a matter of law for nominal damages, the Court agreed it was entitled to that and so determined. Plaintiff's counsel made no further response.
Rule 50 motions must "specify the judgment sought and the law and facts on which the moving party is entitled to the judgment." Plaintiff's counsel did not satisfy these requirements even at the end of the defendants' case.
The Motion for a New Trial
Plaintiff seeks a new trial on a vast number of grounds, all of which are without merit and only a couple of which require even the briefest of comments.
1. Plaintiff claims that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence.
In determining whether to order a new trial on the ground that a verdict is against the weight of the evidence:
"The trial judge, exercising a mature judicial discretion, should view the verdict in the overall setting of the trial; consider the character of the evidence and the complexity or simplicity of the legal principles which the jury was bound to apply to the facts; and abstain from interfering with the verdict unless it is quite clear that the jury has reached a seriously erroneous result. The judge's duty is essentially to see that there is no miscarriage of justice. If convinced that there has been then it is his duty to set the verdict aside; otherwise not."
Bevevino v. Saydjari, 574 F.2d 676, 684 (2d Cir. 1978) (quoting 6A MOORE'S FEDERAL PRACTICE ¶ 59.08[5], at 59-160-59-161 (1973)).
In this case, there was no miscarriage of justice. Indeed, the evidence that plaintiff suffered no pecuniary damage as a result of the destruction of the roller coaster was compelling. Surely there is no basis for setting aside the jury's determination in this respect.
2. Plaintiff argues that it was prejudiced by time limits imposed by the Court on the presentation of its case.
Trial courts have discretion to impose reasonable time limits on the presentation of evidence at trial. This is essential if they are to manage their dockets, as many cases compete for trials and for the attention of judges, and no party has an unlimited call on their time. Moreover, in order to prevail on a claim that a time limit was too short, a party must have come forward with an offer of proof showing how its presentation would be curtailed by it and must demonstrate prejudice.
E.g., Life Plus Int'l v. Brown, 317 F.3d 799, 807 (8th Cir. 2003) ("Trial courts are permitted to impose reasonable time limits on the presentation of evidence to prevent undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence."); Sparshott v. Feld Entm't, Inc., 311 F.3d 425, 433 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (("The district court's decisions on how to structure time limits are reviewable only for abuse of discretion.") (citations omitted)); Amarel v. Connell, 102 F.3d 1494, 1513-15 (9th Cir. 1996) ("The case law makes clear that where a district court has set reasonable time limits and has shown flexibility in applying them, that court does not abuse its discretion. Moreover, to overturn a jury verdict based on a party's failure to use its limited time for witness cross-examination would be to invite parties to exhaust their time limits without completing cross-examination, then appeal on due process grounds."); Deus v. Allstate Ins. Co., 15 F.3d 506, 520 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1014 (1994) ("In the management of its docket, the court has an inherent right to place reasonable limitations on the time allotted to any given trial."); Borges v. Our Lady of the Sea Corp., 935 F.2d 436, 442-43 (1st Cir. 1991) ("District courts may impose reasonable time limits on the presentation of evidence."); Flaminio v. Honda Motor Co., 733 F.2d 463, 473 (7th Cir. 1984) ("[I]n this era of crowded district court dockets federal district judges not only may but must exercise strict control over the length of trials, and are therefore entirely within their rights in setting reasonable deadlines in advance and holding the parties to them. . . .").
See, e.g., Life Plus Int'l, 317 F.3d at 807 ("To preserve this issue for our review, a party must lodge a timely objection to the time limits and must make a proffer of evidence that was excluded for lack of sufficient time."); Sparshott, 311 F.3d at 433 ("[A] party arguing that time limits were unfair must also show that he was prejudiced thereby."); Bank of China v. NBM L.L.C., 01 Civ. 0815 (DC), 2002 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16979, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 11, 2002) ("[A]t no point did defendants identify any admissible, relevant, evidence that they were unable to offer because of the time limits set by the Court.").
Plaintiff has not made the necessary showing. The initial eleven hour per side time limitation was imposed only after extensive experience with the excessively time consuming approach of plaintiff's counsel, after affording both sides an opportunity to be heard as to the time required, and only after due consideration of the requirements of the case. The Court extended the time limit during the trial by three more hours for each side, not because it felt that the case warranted additional time, but in deference to counsel's request. Tr., Jan. 26, 2004, at 588-90 (expanding time limit by 90 minutes on each side); id., Jan. 27, 2004, at 699-700 (expanding time limit by an additional 90 minutes on each side). The limit applied equally to both sides, which constantly were kept informed of the remaining time. And plaintiff's motion is devoid of any offer of proof demonstrating what evidence was precluded by the time limit or any showing of prejudice from the preclusion.
See, e.g., Tr., Jan. 20, 2004, at 2 (imposing 11 hour limit on presentation by each side based in part on plaintiff's representation that plaintiff required two or possibly three trial days).
3. Plaintiff complains that the Court "belittl[ed] counsel before the jury and berat[ed] counsel both before the jury and in the absence of the jury" and that its remarks "had a clear adverse impact on the jury to the extreme prejudice of the plaintiff." (Notice of motion at 3) Nowhere in plaintiff's papers is there a single citation to the record to substantiate these claims. While the Court acknowledges that plaintiff's counsel sorely tried its patience from time to time and that the Court on occasion made that clear to counsel out of the presence of the jury, nothing occurred in the presence of the jury that betrayed this fact. The Court is entirely satisfied that plaintiff received the fair trial to which it was entitled and which the Court strove to ensure that it received.
The motion for judgment as a matter of law or, in the alternative, for a new trial and other relief is denied in all respects.
SO ORDERED.