United States District Court, E.D. California
ORDER ATTACHING JURY INSTRUCTIONS OBJECTIONS DUE BY
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2019
Attached
are the court's jury instructions. The instructions are
based on the parties' jointly proposed jury instructions,
ECF No. 236, which I understand come largely from the Ninth
Circuit Model Jury Instructions. I have included the first of
defendants' separate proposed jury instructions, to which
plaintiff no longer objects. See ECF No. 240 at 3
and ECF No. 254. I have not included plaintiffs separately
proposed instruction or defendant's second separately
proposed instruction. See ECF No. 238 and ECF No.
240 at 4. Plaintiffs separate instruction on wealth seems
intended for use in state court when punitive damages are not
at issue, see ECF No. 238 at 6, and defendants'
instruction on causation seems geared specifically toward
Monell claims, see City of Canton, Ohio v.
Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 391-92 (1989). Objections are due
by the close of business on December 6, 2019.
IT IS
SO ORDERED.
JURY
INSTRUCTIONS
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 1
Members
of the jury:
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. To those facts you will apply the law as I give it to
you. 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
sympathies. That means that you must decide the case solely
on the evidence before you. You will recall that you took an
oath to do so.
At the
end of the trial I will give you final instructions. It is
the final instructions that will govern your duties.
Please
do not read into these instructions, or anything I may say or
do, that I have an opinion regarding the evidence or what
your verdict should be.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 2
To help
you follow the evidence, I will give you a brief summary of
the positions of the parties:
This is
a civil rights action brought under the Eighth Amendment of
the United States Constitution. The Eighth Amendment protects
individuals against cruel and unusual punishment while in
government custody. The plaintiff in this case, Raymond
Baldhosky, was formerly incarcerated by the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, also known as
“CDCR, ” at CDCR's California Substance Abuse
Treatment Facility. Mr. Baldhosky contends in this lawsuit
that while incarcerated at that facility his Eighth Amendment
rights were violated because the individual defendants were
deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs. Each
of the defendants was a state-employed healthcare provider at
that facility; a physician, physician assistant, or nurse.
Generally, Mr. Baldhosky contends that he developed a
pressure sore on his buttocks and that the defendants
deliberately failed to provide him timely and adequate
medical treatment.
As
plaintiff, Mr. Baldhosky has the burden of proving these
claims.
Defendants
deny these claims and contend that they properly addressed
plaintiff's medical needs on those occasions that they
saw or treated him.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 3
This is
not an action against the State of California, or against the
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or
any prison of the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation.
This is
an action against defendants Byers, Dunn, Gonzalez, Grossi,
Indendi, Kaylor, Metts, Nguyen, Peters, and Ruff.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 4
When a
party has the burden of proving 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.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 5
You
should decide the case as to each defendant separately.
Unless otherwise stated, the instructions apply to all
parties.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 6
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;
3. any facts to which the lawyers have agreed;
4. any facts that I may instruct you to accept as proved.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 7
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 statements by lawyers are not evidence. The
lawyers are not witnesses. What they say in their opening
statements, 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 the
lawyers have stated them, your memory of them controls.
2. Questions and objections by lawyers are not evidence.
Attorneys have a duty to their clients to object when they
believe a question is improper under the rules of evidence.
You should not be influenced by the objection or by the
court's ruling on it.
3. Testimony that is excluded or stricken, or that you are
instructed to disregard, is not evidence and must not be
considered. In addition, some evidence may be received only
for a limited purpose; when I instruct you to consider
certain evidence only for a limited purpose, you must do so
and you may not consider that evidence for any other purpose.
4. Anything you may see or hear when the court was not in
session is not evidence. You are to decide the case solely on
the evidence received at the trial.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 8
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.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 9
There
are rules of evidence that control what can be received into
evidence. When a lawyer asks a question or offers an exhibit
into evidence and a lawyer on the other side thinks that it
is not permitted by the rules of evidence, that lawyer may
object. If I overrule the objection, the question may be
answered or the exhibit received. If I sustain the objection,
the question cannot be answered, and the exhibit cannot be
received. Whenever I sustain an objection to a question, you
must ignore the question and must not guess what the answer
might have been.
Sometimes
I may order that evidence be stricken from the record and
that you disregard or ignore that evidence. That means when
you are deciding the case, you must not consider the stricken
evidence for any purpose.
COURT'S
INSTRUCTION NO. 10
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.
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. the witness's bias or prejudice, if any;
6. whether other evidence contradicted the witness's
...