![]() ![]() Jmol rule 50 trial#This ruling really means that the judge should have granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment and never let the case go to trial in the first place. So, after the jury returns a verdict for the Plaintiff, the judge grants the renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law because, in the judge's view, the law simply does not recognize the duty that is the basis of the plaintiff's case. The judge may believe that the law does not recognize the duty the plaintiff is pushing (maybe the case is against a governmental entity, and the judge believes the duty pushed by the plaintiff is a public duty rather than a special duty - a public duty cannot serve as the basis of a tort claim). In a negligence case, the most likely issue that will be decided as a matter of law is whether the defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff in the first place. If the matter should have been decided as a matter of law (i.e., should never have gone to the jury in the first place), the judge now has to sack up and expose himself to the court of appeals by granting the defendant's renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law. The judge gets to the end of the case, and the jury has not done his job for him (the judge had hoped the jury would just return a verdict for the defendant so the judge would not have to hang his ass out there deciding something as a matter of law). So, for example, if the case was a simple negligence case (let's assume diversity jurisdiction got us into federal court), the plaintiff would have the burden of proving duty, breach of the duty, and damages proximately caused by the breach. To grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law, the judge is saying that no reasonable juror could find that the Plaintiff proved a critical element of the Plaintiff's cause of action. ![]()
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