Thomsen, et al., v. Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District, et al.,
Filing
151
PRELIMINARY JURY INSTRUCTIONS signed by Judge Kimberly J. Mueller on 6/10/2013. (Zignago, K.)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
MARK THOMSEN,
)
)
Plaintiff,
)
)
v.
)
)
SACRAMENTO METROPOLITAN)
FIRE DISTRICT,
)
)
Defendant.
)
)
______________________________)
No. 2:09-cv-1108 KJM EFB
PRELIMINARY JURY INSTRUCTIONS
DATED: June 10, 2013.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Preliminary Instruction 1:
Ladies and gentlemen: You are now the jury in this case. It is my duty to instruct you on
the law.
It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. You, and you alone, are
the judges of the facts. You will hear the evidence, decide what the facts are, and then apply
those facts to the law which I will give to you. This is how you will reach your verdict.
You must follow the law as I give it to you whether you agree with it or not. And you
must not be influenced by any personal likes or dislikes, opinions, prejudices, or sympathy. That
means that you must decide the case solely on the evidence before you. The evidence will
consist of the testimony of witnesses, documents, and other things received into evidence as
exhibits and any facts on which the lawyers agree or which I may instruct you to accept.
You must not infer from these instructions or from anything I may say or do as indicating
that I have an opinion regarding the evidence or what your verdict should be.
In following my instructions, you must follow all of them and not single out some and
ignore others; they are all important.
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Preliminary Instruction 2:
During the trial you may hear me use a few terms that you may not have heard before. I
will briefly explain some of the most common to you. The party who has brought suit is called
the plaintiff. In this action, the plaintiff is Mark Thomsen. The party being sued is called the
defendant. The defendant in this case is Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District.
Plaintiff is represented by Nilesh Choudhary, Joel Rapaport and Samuel Swenson;
defendant is represented by Joseph Salazar Jr. and Caitlin Colman.
The attorneys representing the parties in this case are not allowed to speak with you.
When you see the attorneys at a recess or pass them in the halls and they do not speak to you,
they are not being rude or unfriendly – they are simply following the law.
You will sometimes hear me refer to “counsel.” Counsel is another way of saying
“lawyers” or “attorneys.” I will sometimes refer to myself as the “court.”
To help you follow the evidence, I will give you a brief summary of the positions of the
parties:
In this case, the plaintiff, Mark Thomsen, claims he was unlawfully subjected to
employer retaliation, a number of adverse employment actions, was denied due process rights,
and suffered damages as a result of unlawful conduct by his employer, defendant Sacramento
Metropolitan
Fire District.
The plaintiff claims these adverse actions occurred as a result of him engaging in
lawfully protected activity by reporting his concerns to certain members of the Fire District’s
Board of Directors, and the California Attorney General’s office that a coworker’s rights had
been violated by unlawful conduct of other employees of the Fire District, and that the Fire
District may have been improperly handling the incident.
The defendant denies that the plaintiff suffered unlawful adverse employment actions as
a result of engaging in protected activity and asserts that the plaintiff was lawfully disciplined for
engaging in unprotected conduct in violation of law and the Fire District’s policies, rules and
regulations.
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Preliminary Instruction 3:
Plaintiff has the burden of proving his claims. He must prove his claims by a
preponderance of the evidence. When a party has the burden of proof on any claim by a
preponderance of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim is
more probably true than not true.
You should base your decision on all of the evidence, regardless of which party presented
it.
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Preliminary Instruction 4:
The evidence you are to consider in deciding what the facts are consists of:
1) the sworn testimony of any witness;
2) the exhibits which are received into evidence; and
3) any facts to which the parties have agreed.
There are rules of evidence that control what can be received into evidence. From time
to time during the trial, I may make rulings on objections or motions made by the lawyers.
When I sustain an objection, I am excluding that evidence from this trial. If I sustain or uphold
an objection to a question that goes unanswered by the witness, you should not draw any
inferences or conclusions from the question. You must ignore the question and must not guess
what the answer might have been. When I overrule an objection, I am permitting that evidence
to be admitted.
Sometimes I may order that evidence be stricken from the record and that you disregard
or ignore the evidence. That means that when you are deciding the case, you must not consider
the evidence that I told you to disregard.
It is counsels’ duty to object when the other side offers testimony or other evidence that
they believe is not admissible. You should not be unfair or prejudiced against either party
because they made objections
You should not infer or conclude from any ruling or other comment I may make that I
have any opinion on the merits of the case favoring one side or the other. I do not favor one side
or the other.
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Preliminary Instruction 5:
In reaching your verdict, you may consider only the testimony and exhibits received into
evidence. Certain things are not evidence, and you may not consider them in deciding what the
facts are. I will list them for you:
(1) Arguments and non-testimonial statements by counsel for either party are not
evidence. Counsel for the parties are not witnesses. What they say in their opening
statements, will say in their closing arguments, and at other times is intended to help you
interpret the evidence, but it is not evidence. If the facts as you remember them differ
from the way they have stated them, your memory of them controls.
(2) Questions and objections by counsel for either party are not evidence.
(3) Testimony that has been excluded or stricken, or that you have been instructed to
disregard, is not evidence and must not be considered. In addition, sometimes testimony
and exhibits are received only for a limited purpose. When I instruct you that an item of
evidence will be or has been admitted for a limited purpose, you must consider it only for
that limited purpose and for no other.
(4) Anything you may have seen or heard when the court was not in session is not
evidence. You are to decide the case solely on the evidence received at the trial.
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Preliminary Instruction 6:
Evidence may be direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence is direct proof of a fact, such
as testimony by a witness about what that witness personally saw or heard or did. Circumstantial
evidence is proof of one or more facts from which you could find another fact. You should
consider both kinds of evidence. The law makes no distinction between the weight to be given
to either direct or circumstantial evidence. It is for you to decide how much weight to give to
any evidence.
By way of example, if you wake up in the morning and see that the sidewalk is wet, you
may find from that fact that it rained during the night. However, other evidence, such as a turned
on garden hose, may provide a different explanation for the presence of water on the sidewalk.
Therefore, before you decide that a fact has been proved by circumstantial evidence, you
must consider all the evidence in the light of reason, experience, and common sense.
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Preliminary Instruction 7:
In deciding the facts in this case, you may have to decide which testimony to believe and
which testimony not to believe. You may believe everything a witness says, or part of it, or none
of it. Proof of a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of witnesses who testify about
it.
In considering the testimony of any witness, you may take into account:
(1) the opportunity and ability of the witness to see or hear or know the things testified
to;
(2) the witness’s memory;
(3) the witness’s manner while testifying;
(4) the witness’s interest in the outcome of the case and any bias or prejudice;
(5) whether other evidence contradicted the witness’s testimony;
(6) the reasonableness of the witness’s testimony in light of all the evidence; and
(7) any other factors that bear on believability.
The weight of the evidence as to a fact does not necessarily depend on the number of
witnesses who testify about it. The test is not which side brings the greater number of witnesses
or takes the most time to present its evidence, but which witnesses and which evidence appeal to
your minds as being most accurate and otherwise trustworthy.
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Preliminary Instruction 8:
A witness may be discredited or impeached by evidence that is contradictory or shows
that at some other time the witness has said or done something or has failed to say or do
something which is inconsistent with the witness’s present testimony. The evidence that a
witness has been convicted of a crime may also be considered, along with all other evidence, in
deciding whether or not to believe the witness and how much weight to give to the testimony of
the witness. This evidence may not be considered for any other purpose.
As I have already instructed you, it is up to you to decide which testimony to believe and
which testimony not to believe. You may believe everything a witness says, or part of it, or none
of it.
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Preliminary Instruction 9:
From time to time during the trial, it may become necessary for me to talk with the
attorneys out of the hearing of the jury, either by having a conference at the bench when the jury
is present in the courtroom, or by calling a recess. Please understand that while you are waiting,
we are working. The purpose of these conferences is not to keep relevant information from you,
but to decide how certain evidence is to be treated under the rules of evidence and to avoid
confusion and error.
Of course, we will do what we can to keep the number and length of these conferences to
a minimum. I may not always grant a request for a conference. Do not consider my granting or
denying a request for a conference as any indication of my opinion of the case or of what your
verdict should be.
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Preliminary Instruction 10:
At the end of the trial, you will have to make your decision based on what you recall of
the evidence. You will not have a transcript of the trial. I urge you to pay close attention to the
testimony as given.
If at any time you cannot hear the testimony, evidence, questions, or arguments or see the
witnesses or evidence, let me know so that I can correct the problem.
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Preliminary Instruction 11:
If you wish, you may take notes to help you remember the evidence. If you do take notes,
please keep them to yourself until you and your fellow jurors go to the jury room to decide the
case. Do not let note-taking distract you. When you leave, your notes should be left in the
courtroom. No one will read your notes. They will be destroyed at the conclusion of the case.
Whether or not you take notes, you should rely on your own memory of the evidence.
Notes are only to assist your memory. You should not be overly influenced by your notes or
those of your fellow jurors.
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Preliminary Instruction 12:
I will now say a few words about your conduct as jurors.
First, keep an open mind throughout the trial, and do not decide what the verdict should
be until you and your fellow jurors have completed your deliberations at the end of the case.
Second, because you must decide this case based only on the evidence received in the
case and on my instructions as to the law that applies, you must not be exposed to any other
information about the case or to the issues it involves during the course of your jury duty. Thus,
until the end of the case or unless I tell you otherwise:
Do not communicate with anyone in any way and do not let anyone else communicate
with you in any way about the merits of the case or anything to do with it. This includes
discussing the case in person, in writing, by phone or electronic means, via e-mail, text
messaging, or any Internet chat room, blog, Web site or other feature. This applies to
communicating with your fellow jurors until I give you the case for deliberation, and it
applies to communicating with everyone else including your family members, your
employer, the media or press, and the people involved in the trial, although you may
notify your family and your employer that you have been seated as a juror in the case.
But, if you are asked or approached in any way about your jury service or anything about
this case, you must respond that you have been ordered not to discuss the matter and to
report the contact to the court.
Because you will receive all the evidence and legal instruction you properly may
consider to return a verdict: do not read, watch, or listen to any news or media accounts
or commentary about the case or anything to do with it; do not do any research, such as
consulting dictionaries, searching the Internet or using other reference materials; and do
not make any investigation or in any other way try to learn about the case on your own.
Third, if you need to communicate with me simply give a signed note to the clerk to give
to me.
Fourth, do not make up your mind about what the verdict should be until after you have
gone to the jury room to decide the case and you and your fellow jurors have discussed the
evidence. Keep an open mind until then.
The law requires these restrictions to ensure the parties have a fair trial based on the same
evidence that each party has had an opportunity to address. A juror who violates these
restrictions jeopardizes the fairness of these proceeding and a mistrial could result, meaning that
there would have to be a new trial. If any juror is exposed to any outside information, please
notify the court immediately.
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Preliminary Instruction 13:
The next phase of the trial will now begin. First, each side may make an opening
statement. An opening statement is not evidence. It is simply an outline to help you understand
what that party expects the evidence will show. A party is not required to make an opening
statement.
Plaintiff’s counsel will then present evidence, and counsel for the defendant may
cross-examine. Then defendant’s counsel may present evidence, and counsel for the plaintiff
may cross-examine.
After the evidence has been presented, I will instruct you on the law that applies to the
case and the attorneys will make closing arguments.
After that, you will go to the jury room to deliberate on your verdict.
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Preliminary Instruction for Recess 14:
We are about to take our first break during the trial, and I want to remind you of the
instructions I gave you earlier. Until the trial is over, you are not to discuss this case with
anyone, including your fellow jurors, members of your family, people involved in the trial, or
anyone else, nor are you allowed to permit others to discuss the case with you. If anyone
approaches you and tries to talk to you about the case, please let me know about it immediately.
Do not read or listen to any news reports of the trial. Do not conduct any research of any kind,
including by using a cell phone or other electronic device, or by going to a library or other
outside source. Finally, you are reminded to keep an open mind until all the evidence has been
received and you have heard the arguments of counsel, the instructions of the court, and the
views of your fellow jurors.
If you need to speak with me about anything, simply give a signed note to the clerk to
give to me.
I will not repeat these admonitions each time we recess or adjourn, but you will be
reminded of them on such occasions.
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