United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
September 8, 2011
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge
WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge
ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge
No. 10-3728
Appeal from the United
MAURICE COBIGE, personally and as special States District Court for the
representative of the estate of Patricia Cobige, Northern District of Illinois,
Plaintiff-Appellee, Eastern Division.
v. No. 06 C 3807
Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.
CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellants.
Order
Plaintiff-appellee filed a petition for rehearing on July 26, 2011, and
defendants-appellants filed a petition for rehearing on August 9, 2011. All of the
judges on the panel have voted to deny rehearing. The petitions for rehearing are
therefore DENIED.
The opinion of this court issued on July 12, 2011, is amended as follows:
Page 2 line 22 is amended by adding “with respect to compensatory
damages” after the word “officers”.
No. 10-3728 Page 2
Page 3 lines 4 to 6 are amended by deleting the sentence that begins
“The state-law claim…”.
Page 9 is amended by replacing the final two paragraphs with this
language:
The district court should take care to avoid recurrence of a problem
that cropped up in the first trial. The jury’s verdict is ambiguous. It
awarded $3 million in compensatory damages on one count of the
complaint and $2 million on another. It is possible that the jury meant
these to be added, as the judge did, for a total of $5 million, but it is also
possible that the jury meant them to be alternative awards, with only the
greater to be enforced. The verdict form used in this case was not as
opaque as the one in Thomas v. Cook County Sheriff’s Department, 604 F.3d
293, 310–14 (7th Cir. 2010), but it was far from ideal and should be
improved for the next trial. Thomas offers some help for that endeavor. It
would be inappropriate to vacate just the wrongful-death award, while
leaving the awards on other theories untouched. The jury may have seen
a relation among the amounts it awarded for compensatory damages
under different theories of liability and adjusted one in light of the others.
If any of them must be retried, all must be retried.
The judgment is affirmed to the extent it establishes the police
officers’ liability and the amount of punitive damages but is vacated to
the extent that it assesses the amount of compensatory damages. The case
is remanded for a new trial limited to compensatory damages.