United States District Court, D. Minnesota
ORDER RE: PRMI'S MOTION FOR A JURY TRIAL
SUSAN
RICHARD NELSON UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
This
matter is before the Court on PRMI's motion for a jury
trial under Fed.R.Civ.P. 39(b). For the following reasons,
the Court denies the motion.
I.
BACKGROUND
On
December 2, 2016, Plaintiff ResCap Liquidating Trust
(“ResCap”) sued Defendant Primary Residential
Mortgage, Inc. (“PRMI”) for breach of contract
and for indemnification. (See Compl., No. 16-cv-4070
[Doc. No. 1].) The lawsuit was part of a “second
wave”[1]of lawsuits that ResCap filed against
mortgage lender defendants, based on residential
mortgage-backed securities transactions that occurred in the
run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. ResCap did not request a
jury trial in its Complaint.
The
Court Clerk's office received ResCap's Complaint,
and, in line with its typical practice, randomly assigned the
case to a judge of this District, Senior District Court Judge
David S. Doty. In light of the fact that ResCap's lawsuit
against PRMI was related to the ongoing RFC and ResCap
Liquidating Trust consolidated litigation in this District,
see generally No. 13-cv-3451, almost immediately
after initially assigning the case to Judge Doty, the
Clerk's office then reassigned the case to the
undersigned. The Clerk's office noted the reassignment
with the following docket entry: “Case reassigned to
Judge Susan Richard Nelson and Magistrate Judge Hildy Bowbeer
for all further proceedings In Re: RFC and RESCAP
Liquidating Trust Litigation. Senior Judge David S. Doty,
Magistrate Judge Becky R. Thorson no longer assigned to
case.” (See PRMI Clarification Letter [Doc.
No. 2103], Ex. C (emphasis added).)
Shortly
thereafter, on January 6, 2017, PRMI's
counsel[2] filed a “clarification letter”
requesting that the docket entry be corrected to accord with
the then-prevailing “Consolidation Order” in the
wave one litigation. (Id.) That is, PRMI requested
that the docket entry be clarified to state that its case was
only consolidated with the other ResCap matters for
“pretrial purposes, ” that the undersigned's
involvement in the case was solely on a “temporary
basis, ” and that, when the time came for summary
judgment and trial, the case would be “transferred back
to” Judge Doty. (Id.; accord PRMI
Consolidation Order at 2-3 (“[PRMI's case] will
hereby be consolidated before Judge Susan Richard Nelson and
Magistrate Judges Jeffrey J. Keyes and Hildy Bowbeer for all
pretrial purposes, including the coordination of all
discovery matters, settlement discussions, non-dispositive
motions and dispositive motions, other than summary judgment
and trial. . . . At such time as Judge Susan Richard Nelson
deems appropriate, the cases will be transferred back to
their original District Judge and Magistrate Judge for
summary judgment, if appropriate, and trial.”).)
A few
weeks later, on January 23, 2017, the Court amended the
December 2, 2016 docket entry to reflect the Consolidation
Order, as PRMI requested. (See No. 16-cv-4070 [Doc.
No. 5] (“AMENDED Administrative Order consolidating In
Re: RFC and ResCap Liquidating Trust Litigation cases,
for pretrial purposes, into Civil File No.
13-cv-3451 (SRN/HB). All consolidated cases are reassigned,
on a temporary basis, to Judge Susan Richard Nelson
and Magistrate Judge Hildy Bowbeer.”) (emphasis
added).)
“In
reliance on” this amended docket entry (PRMI Br. in
Support of Jury Trial [Doc. No. 5114] (“PRMI
Br.”) at 4), PRMI then made the strategic decision to
forgo its Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial, and
instead pursue a bench trial. (See PRMI An. [Doc.
No. 2156] (containing no demand for a jury trial); see
also Fed. R. Civ. P. 38(c) (“A party waives a jury
trial unless its demand is properly served and filed, ”
i.e., “no later than 14 days after the last
pleading directed to the issue is served”).)
As
“wave one” of the consolidated litigation
proceeded through 2017 and 2018, however, the judges of this
District determined that, for a variety of reasons, the
undersigned should preside over all remaining cases through
summary judgment and trial. Indeed, at multiple case
management conferences between July 2017 and August 2018,
this Court kept the parties fully apprised of the bench's
decision in this regard. (See, e.g., May 18, 2017
Hr'g Tr. [Doc. No. 2621] at 47-48 (announcing the Court
would be handling all “common-issue summary judgment
motions, ” regardless of original case assignments);
July 20, 2017 Hr'g Tr. [Doc. No. 2718] at 103-04
(clarifying that, “I think the bench is going to
reasonably expect here that I will try the first
case”); Aug. 24, 2017 Hr'g Tr. [Doc. No. 2758] at
32-34 (expanding upon the Court's earlier statement, and
noting that, in response to the “guidance from the
bench, ” the Court would be trying at least the first
three cases); Aug. 23, 2018 Hr'g Tr. [Doc. No. 4338] at
231 (acknowledging that “at the beginning, the deal
with the bench was that I was going to give [the cases] back
to my colleagues for summary judgment and trial, ” but
“now I have them through summary judgment and
trial”); see also ResCap Br. in Opp. to Jury
Trial Demand [Doc. No. 5122] (“ResCap Br.”) at
4-7 (collecting additional citations).)
Although
PRMI's counsel was present at these case management
conferences and the related proceedings (by virtue of their
related representations, see supra n.2), PRMI never
sought to re-assert its Seventh Amendment right to a jury
trial at the time. Rather, PRMI remained silent, even as the
Court entertained consolidated argument on summary judgment
and Daubert motions in mid-June 2018, and then
rendered a 182-page “common issues” summary
judgment order two months later. More striking still, PRMI
remained silent as this Court and the parties spent the fall
of 2018 preparing for the first (and, to date, only) trial in
the consolidated ResCap litigation: the Home Loan Center
(“HLC”) jury trial. (See generally HLC
Attorneys' Fees Decision [Doc. No. 5132] at 10-11 (noting
the numerous HLC pre-trial conferences the Court held from
August through October 2018).) This silence was notable
because PRMI was represented by the same counsel as HLC
(see supra n.2), and because HLC, like PRMI, was
originally supposed to return to a different judge in this
District for summary judgment and trial, Judge Donovan W.
Frank. Yet, in line with the discussions at the case
management conferences, it did not. Thus, by the start of the
HLC trial in mid-October 2018, PRMI's counsel understood
that PRMI's trial would be handled by the undersigned.
The
Court then presided over the HLC trial, from October 15 to
November 7, 2018. Along the way, the Court resolved
evidentiary disputes, heard witness testimony, and instructed
the jury on the law. At the end of the trial, after the Court
had rendered decisions on several pre-verdict motions for
judgment as a matter of law, the jury deliberated and
returned a $28.7 million verdict in favor of ResCap. Again,
at no point during the HLC trial did PRMI suggest that it,
too, wanted a jury trial.
On May
9, 2019, however, after the conclusion of the HLC trial, and
near the close of fact discovery for the (two remaining)
“second wave” cases, PRMI's counsel informed
the Court, for the first time, that PRMI understood that its
case would return to Judge Doty for summary judgment and a
bench trial. (See May 9, 2019 Hr'g Tr. [Doc. No.
5105] at 70-71.) PRMI based this belief solely on the
two-year-old, January 23, 2017 amended administrative docket
entry. (Id.) After being reminded that the bench had
long ago determined that it would be most efficient for the
undersigned to oversee the few remaining ResCap cases through
trial, [3] PRMI's counsel announced, “in
that case, [PRMI will] also be filing a jury trial
demand.” (Id. at 72.)
PRMI
filed its motion and accompanying brief shortly thereafter.
(See PRMI Br.) ResCap filed a brief in opposition.
(See ResCap Br.) The Court then entertained oral
argument at the July 11, 2019 case management conference.
II.
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