Supreme Court Resolves Circuit Split on Post-Trial Preservation of Summary Judgment Issues

In some parts of the country, there’s now a new—possibly less burdensome—path to appeal issues lost on summary judgment. On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision holding that a party need not file post-trial motions to preserve for appeal a purely legal issue that the party lost at summary judgment. The decision resolves an issue that had divided the circuits. 

Dupree v. Younger involved a civil rights lawsuit brought by a plaintiff who alleged that state correctional officers assaulted him on the orders of their lieutenant during his pretrial detention in a Maryland state prison. At summary judgment, the lieutenant argued that the detainee had not exhausted his administrative remedies before filing suit. The district court denied the motion and found the exhaustion requirement met. At trial, the jury found for the detainee and awarded him $700,000. The lieutenant did not file a Rule 50 post-trial motion and instead proceeded to appeal the exhaustion issue. The Fourth Circuit dismissed the case, holding that the lieutenant should have renewed the issue in a post-trial motion. The Supreme Court then granted certiorari to resolve a circuit split that had developed around this issue, with the First, Fourth, Fifth and Eleventh Circuits requiring preservation in a post-trial motion and the Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and DC Circuits reaching the opposite conclusion.

In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit and held the lieutenant did not need to renew the exhaustion argument after trial. The Court’s analysis distinguished between factual and legal issues raised at summary judgment. Factual issues can change during trial, so a post-trial motion is important to allow the trial court to consider those issues in light of the evidence presented. That post-trial decision becomes part of the final record, which the appellate court can then review. In contrast, purely legal issues raised at summary judgment do not depend on the facts developed at trial, so raising them again after trial would be redundant and unnecessary. Imposing a requirement to renew the legal issue in a post-trial motion would thus be an “empty exercise,” the Court said.  

The Court’s decision imposes a uniform, and in some instances less burdensome, rule for parties who lose on legal issues at summary judgment. That said, parties must still evaluate whether their issues are “purely legal.” During summary judgment, a district court’s decision is only “purely legal” when the material facts are undisputed. In ruling against the lieutenant in Dupree, the district court found there was “no dispute” over the facts related to exhaustion. But courts sometimes reject summary judgment for both legal and factual reasons. Even with this new regime in place, when some or all of a court’s summary-judgment decision is based on disputed facts, parties must carefully evaluate whether to preserve their arguments in a post-trial motion.