Concept
When Answers Match the Verdict
Consistency of written answers with the general verdict
When Answers Match the Verdict
A jury that returns a general verdict and also answers written questions has stated its decision twice. When the two statements agree, Rule 49(b)(2) says the court must approve, for entry under Rule 58, an appropriate judgment on the verdict and answers.1 This is the simplest branch of the hybrid-verdict rule, and the duty to harmonize feeds directly into it.
Consistency sometimes shows on the face of the jury's papers, because every answer plainly supports the verdict. Sometimes it appears only after the court reads the answers fairly. A court faced with an apparent inconsistency may be able to reconcile it, and it should try, viewing the case in the light most favorable to consistency.2 Either way the command is the same. A verdict that survives that effort is a consistent verdict, and the rule's remedies for conflict never come into play.
The word "must" leaves the judge no discretion. The written questions go to issues of fact whose decision is necessary to the verdict, so they let the court test the jury's bottom-line decision against the jury's own findings. When the test comes back clean, the findings have confirmed the verdict, and nothing remains for the judge to resolve. A discretionary rule at that point would invite second-guessing of a result the jury's answers have already corroborated. An earlier version of the rule, quoted in Mason v. Ford Motor Co., spoke of a verdict and answers that were "harmonious" and said the appropriate judgment "shall be entered pursuant to Rule 58."3 The wording has changed, but the command has not.
The trouble, when it comes, hides in the answers. Suppose the pedestrian's verdict arrives with an answer finding the pedestrian contributorily negligent, in a jurisdiction where that finding bars recovery. The mandatory-judgment rule does not reach that verdict. A recovery and a finding that the substantive law makes fatal to recovery cannot stand together. In one automobile case on those facts, the jury returned a $500,000 general verdict for the plaintiff and found the plaintiff contributorily negligent. The court could not reconcile the two and entered judgment for the defendant on the specific answer.4 Because the verdict and the answer were not consistent, that case belonged to Rule 49(b)(3), the branch the next sections develop.
The test under Rule 49(b)(2), then, is not whether the judge would have decided the case the same way. It is whether the jury's statements fit one another under the governing law. When they do, the court approves judgment on the verdict and the answers together.