SEVENTH AMENDMENT AND RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL
I. General Concepts Regarding Seventh Amendment
A) Text: “In Suits at common law […] the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
B) Not applied to the States: This provision applies only to federal trials. It has never been held applicable to state tirials.
C) 7th Amendment Protected Under FRCP: Per Rule 38(a): “the right of trial by jury as declared in the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution or as given by a statute of the United States shall be preserved to the parties inviolate.”
i. Party Must Demand: The right to a jury trial is not self-executing. A party who wishes a jury trial on a particular issue must file a demand therefor to the other parties within 10 days after the service of the last pleading directed to that issue. Rule 38(b).
D) Distinguished from equitable claim: There is no jury trial as to equitable claims (e.g., a claim for injunction)
E) Effect of “Preserving” the right of jury trial in suits “at common law”: The Drafters of the Seventh Amendment were continuing a right that already existed because of English common law when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791. Thus, only if the suit is one that would or could have been a suit at common law in 1791 will there be a right to a jury trial.
II. How the Modern Plethora of Statutes and Procedural Devices Affect Right to Jury Trial
A) 3 Main Problems
1) What happens when a case contains both legal and equitable claims?
2) How does a court determine whether a particular claim is legal or equitable?
NOTE: This problem arises mainly when the claim is based on a statute that has no precise analogue to pre-1791 law.
3) What is the effect of a procedural device that didn’t exist at common law in 1791?
B) Mixed Legal and Equitable Claims: Modern cases often contain both legal and equitable claims. When this occurs, there are often factual issues that are common to both sorts of claims. What happens to the right of jury trial when this occurs?
a) Distinct Issues: It may be the case that some of the claims in a specific lawsuit are legal, and some are equitable, but that the issues of fact involved are particular to each claim. In such a case, there is no problem in trying the equitable claims to the judge, and the legal claims to a jury. Why? Because neither interferes with the other, and the order of hearing can be determined by considerations of judici
terclaim, it would hear Fox’s equitable claim first. The appeals court affirmed.
iii. Supreme Court reverses: The Court held that the judge had no authority to hear the equitable claim first, contrary to Beacon’s wishes. To do so might “operate either by way of res judicata or collateral estoppel so as to conclude both parties with respect to the issues involved in the subsequent trial of the treble damage claim.
1) HELD: Where there are both legal and equitable claims in the same case, the trial judge must ordinarily try the legal claims first, so as to ensure the right of trial jury as to those claims. Only under the most imperative circumstances can the right to jury trial of legal issues be lost through prior determination of equitable claims.
Legal claim rarely triable second: Only if the party asserting the equitable claims would be irreparably harmed by having these claims delayed until after hearing of the legal claims could the court hear the equitable claims first—that is, where issues of fact are common to both claims.
