Rule 50

The petitioner, a resident of North Carolina, sued respondent, a South Carolina corporation, for damages for injuries allegedly caused by the respondent's negligence. He was employed as a lineman in the construction crew of a construction contractor. Respondent Blue Ridge Rural Electrical Cooperative, Inc., a South Carolina corporation in the business of selling electric power, had contracted with R. H. Bouligny, Inc. for $334,300 to build approximately 24 miles of new power lines, reconvert about 88 miles of existing lines to higher capacities, and construct two new substations and a breaker station. The petitioner was injured while connecting power lines to one of the new substations. Byrd first recovered full benefits under the South Carolina Workmen's Compensation Law from his direct employer Bouligny. He then filed a negligence action against Blue Ridge in the United States District Court for the Western District of South Carolina under diversity jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332. At trial Blue Ridge asserted an affirmative defense that Byrd qualified as its statutory employee because the contracted work was part of its trade, business, or occupation. Blue Ridge's manager testified on direct examination that three of its substations had been built by its own construction and maintenance crews. His answers on cross-examination created uncertainty that prompted the trial judge to note he appeared to have changed his testimony. Blue Ridge also introduced evidence that it financed the project with a federal loan, purchased the materials, and maintained an engineering service contract with an independent firm for design and supervision. Its charter under the South Carolina Rural Electric Cooperative Act authorized it to construct generating plants, buildings, and equipment necessary for its operations. After all evidence was presented the district judge struck the affirmative defense, ruling that Blue Ridge could not be a statutory employer because its crews performed work only for its own use rather than for others. The judge then denied Blue Ridge's motion for a directed verdict and submitted the negligence claim to the jury, which returned a verdict for Byrd in the amount of $126,786.80. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, resolved uncertainties in the manager's testimony in Blue Ridge's favor, and directed entry of judgment for Blue Ridge without remanding for further proceedings. Byrd petitioned for certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. The case had previously been dismissed on the ground that Blue Ridge enjoyed tort immunity as a nonprofit corporation, but the Court of Appeals had reversed that dismissal and remanded for trial. On the present appeal the Court of Appeals did not reach other grounds raised by Blue Ridge because its resolution of the statutory employer issue disposed of the case.

In September 1980 respondent Catrett, as administratrix of her husband's estate, commenced a wrongful-death action in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against fifteen named corporations including petitioner Celotex Corporation. The complaint alleged that her husband Louis H. Catrett died in 1979 from exposure to asbestos products manufactured or distributed by the defendants. The action was removed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on diversity grounds. After extensive discovery Celotex filed a motion for summary judgment in September 1981 asserting that respondent had failed to produce any evidence that the decedent had been exposed to Celotex asbestos products. In response respondent produced a transcript of the decedent's deposition taken in a separate California proceeding, a letter from an official of one of Celotex's former insurance companies, and a letter from one of Celotex's customers. In July 1982 the District Court granted summary judgment to Celotex on the ground that respondent had made no showing of exposure to Celotex products in the District of Columbia or elsewhere within the statutory period. Respondent appealed only that ruling. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, holding that Celotex had failed to meet its initial burden because it made no effort to adduce affirmative evidence supporting its motion. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among the circuits concerning the proper standard under Rule 56.

The respondent Del Monte Dunes and its predecessor in interest owned a 37.6-acre ocean-front parcel in the city of Monterey that had previously served as an oil-company terminal and tank farm. The parcel contained remnants of industrial use, including tank pads, broken concrete, oil-soaked sand, and nonnative ice plant that had spread across roughly 25 percent of the site and threatened the remaining native buckwheat habitat of the endangered Smith's Blue Butterfly. The property was zoned for multi-family residential development under the city's general zoning ordinance. Between 1981 and 1986 the landowners submitted a series of development proposals that began with 344 units and were successively reduced, at the city's suggestion, to 264 units, then 224 units, and finally 190 units. The planning commission denied each application. The city council twice overruled the commission and granted a conditional-use permit for 190 units subject to specific conditions. After the landowners revised their plans to satisfy those conditions, devoting substantial acreage to public open space, beach access, view corridors, and buckwheat restoration, the planning commission rejected the final proposal in January 1986 and the city council denied it in June 1986 without specifying further measures the landowners could take. After five years, five formal decisions, and nineteen site plans, Del Monte Dunes filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the city's actions effected a regulatory taking, violated due process, and denied equal protection. The district court initially dismissed the claims as unripe. The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded. On remand the district court submitted the takings and equal-protection claims to a jury while reserving the substantive-due-process claim for the court. At trial the jury heard evidence of the city's shifting demands, inconsistent positions, and interest in acquiring the parcel for public use. The court instructed the jury that it should find for Del Monte Dunes if the city's denial either left the property without any economically viable use or failed to substantially advance a legitimate public purpose. The jury returned a general verdict for Del Monte Dunes on the takings claim, a separate verdict on the equal-protection claim, and an award of $1.45 million in damages. The district court denied the city's post-verdict motions, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to address whether liability issues on the regulatory-takings claim were properly submitted to the jury. The Court also addressed whether the court of appeals had applied an erroneous standard permitting reweighing of the city's land-use decision. Finally, the Court considered whether the rough-proportionality test of Dolan v. City of Tigard applied to this denial of development.