In Ziccarelli v. Dart, No. 24-2377 (7th Cir. June 30, 2025), addressing an issue of first impression for the circuit, the Seventh Circuit holds that a district court’s finding whether or not a party preserved grounds in a pre-verdict Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a) motion – thus permitting a post-trial Rule 50(b) motion – is subject to abuse-of-discretion instead of de novo review.
Plaintiff sued Dart, Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, for alleged violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), including (in relevant part) FMLA interference. “At trial upon the close of Ziccarelli’s case, counsel for the Sheriff’s Office orally moved for ‘a judgment of directed finding.’ She then asked if she should do that ‘in front of the jury or at sidebar,’ but said nothing more. The court took the motion under advisement, and the jury later returned a verdict of $240,000 for Ziccarelli.”
On the Sheriff’s Rule 50(b) post-trial motion, though, the district court granted judgment as a matter of law and, conditionally, a new trial.
The Seventh Circuit reverses judgment as a matter of law but affirms the order for a new trial.
“An unbriefed threshold question is the standard of review we should apply to a district court’s decision that grounds were properly preserved in a Rule 50(a) motion. While we review de novo the substance of a decision granting judgment as a matter of law, . . . we have not explained how we review an underlying decision on whether grounds were properly preserved. Other authorities also reflect that the standard of review is unclear.”
“We conclude that the appropriate standard of review is for abuse of discretion,” following the only federal appellate authority it could locate on the subject (from the Eighth Circuit). “[W]hether a Rule 50(a) motion adequately specified the grounds for judgment will depend on trial context, making it a fact-bound inquiry best resolved by the district court in the first instance. We will show deference to that decision, though we do not delegate it entirely to the district court.”
And the Seventh Circuit finds just such an abuse of discretion here. Recall that defendant’s original (oral) Rule 50(a) motion at trial failed to cite specific grounds. But after trial, “[t]he district court granted the Sheriff’s Office’s Rule 50(b) motion because evidence at trial showed that Ziccarelli” took an additional day of FMLA leave after calling the FMLA coordinator, thus supposedly negating as a matter of law “any reasonable inference” of prejudice necessary for FMLA interference liability.
The Seventh Circuit holds that plaintiff was not timely advised of this ground for judgment as a matter of law. “Because Rule 50(a)’s specificity requirement serves a notice function, the question is whether the non-moving party should have understood the grounds that were raised by the Rule 50(a) motion. Such an assessment should encompass the broader trial context, including arguments made outside the four corners of a Rule 50(a) motion.”
There are cases where a party is fairly on notice despite a lack of specificity in the Rule 50(a) motion because, among other things, the supporting arguments had been made “over and over again” in filings or at trial. This apparently did not happen here: the key evidence of alleged lack of prejudice emerged only during trial. The defendant’s “pretrial filings and [the trial] transcripts focused on whether Ziccarelli could seek damages ‘snowballing’ from his resignation, not whether Ziccarelli could show prejudice at all and therefore prove liability notwithstanding his having taken FMLA leave on September 19.”
“To be thorough, we also reviewed the motions in limine to see if any of them should have put Ziccarelli on notice that the district court might grant judgment as a matter of law based on Ziccarelli’s additional day of leave when the Sheriff’s Office made its content-free Rule 50(a) motion during trial.” But the defendant’s motion in limine only “confirms that the pretrial conversations were aimed at only post-resignation damages,” not the liability ramifications of Ziccarelli’s taking an additional day of FMLA leave.
In sum, the panel concludes that the defendant failed to preserve this argument in its Rule 50(a) motion. Nevertheless, the panel holds that owing to the “insufficient evidence of prejudice,” the district court did not abuse its discretion in conditionally granting the Sheriff a new trial.
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