United States First Circuit

In a tort action involving settling and non-settling successive tortfeasors in which the district court bifuricated the action but misrepresented the effect of a jury's verdict after the first-phase trial was completed, judgment and order are affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part where: 1) both the court's disposition of the Fed. Civ. Pro. Rule 59(e) motion and its concomitant dismissal of a cross-claim rested upon an incorrect interpretation of the effect of the first-phase jury verdict; and 2) the district court erred in foreclosing further litigation when a tortfeasor was entitled to some process by which it could test how the plaintiff's damages should be allocated with a successive tortfeasor.

Appellate Information

• Decided 04/10/2008
• Published 04/10/2008

Judges

• SELYA, Senior Circuit Judge., Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, SELYA, Senior Circuit Judge, and KEENAN, Senior District Judge.

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Jennifer S. Carroll, for appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Gladys E. Guemarez, with whom Law Offices of Gladys E. Guemarez was on brief, for cross-defendants, appellees., Eric A. Tulla, with whom Rivera, Tulla & Ferrer, Guillermo Ramos Luiña, Edward A. Moss, and Shook, Hardy & Bacon were on brief, for plaintiff, appellee.