The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion; PDF] 6-2 Thursday in Dietz v. Bouldin [SCOTUSblog materials] that federal district courts have “the inherent power to rescind a jury discharge order and recall a jury for further deliberations” in a civil trial to remedy an error in the jury’s verdict. Writing for the Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor added that “this power is limited in duration and scope, and must be exercised carefully … [b]ecause the potential of taint­ing jurors and the jury process after discharge is extraor­dinarily high.” The question of whether a federal district court can recall a jury after it had discharged came up in when the jury, while ruling in favor of the plaintiff, returned a “legally impermissible verdict” by awarding damages of $0 to Dietz, which was well below the stipulated amount of $10,136. The judge, realizing the error after discharging the jury, re-empaneled it and ordered them to deliberate again to reach a new verdict. The defendant’s attorney objected to the re-empanelling of the discharged jurors, stating that they were no longer capable of reaching a fair and impartial verdict. However, the judge, after confirming that no member of the jury spoke to anyone about the case during the short time that they were discharged, set aside the objection and ordered the jury to start over, stating that he would “hate to just throw away the money and time that’s been expended in this trial.” The jury then returned with a verdict of $15,000 in damages in favor of Dietz. The case finally came to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the ruling [opinion, PDF] of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, holding that the district court exercised its inherent powers to rescind its discharge order and recall a jury cautiously in this instance and therefore stayed within the bounds of the harmless error standard of Rule 61 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, stating that the common law rule that judges may not call back a discharged jury to amend a verdict is even more relevant in “today’s world of cellphones, wireless Internet, and 24/7 news coverage.” He added that “Jurors may easily come across prejudicial information when, after trial, the court lifts their restrictions on outside information.” Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the dissent.