Post-Trial Motions in Federal Court: Judgment as a Matter of Law, New Trial, Remittitur, and Relief From Judgment

Summary. The 28 days after a federal jury verdict decide whether the verdict survives and what the appeal will look like. This article explains the four post-trial motions that do that work: judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50, a new trial under Rule 59(a), a motion to alter or amend under Rule 59(e), and relief from judgment under Rule 60(b). It walks through the Supreme Court cases that define each one (Reeves, Unitherm, Ortiz, Weisgram, Gasperini, Hetzel, Dimick, Banister, Kemp, Pioneer, Espinosa, Liljeberg, Gonzalez, and Buck), the remittitur and additur rules that the Seventh Amendment imposes, and the separate constitutional review of punitive damages under Gore, State Farm, and Exxon. It then covers the deadlines that cannot be extended, the way each motion starts or fails to start the appeal clock under Appellate Rule 4(a)(4), stays and bonds under Rule 62, interest, costs, fees, and the equitable relief that follows an intellectual property verdict. Two worked examples, a $4.2 million trademark verdict the defendant wants reduced and a plaintiff who lost on a bad instruction, show how the motions fit together, and the strategy sections address both the party attacking the verdict and the party defending it.

The jury has been out for six hours. The foreperson hands the form to the deputy, the judge reads it, and your client's company owes $4.2 million to a competitor it believes stole the idea in the first place. Everyone in the gallery thinks the case is over. The two lawyers at counsel table know that it is not, and that the next 28 days will matter more than the last three weeks did.

A verdict is a finding, not a judgment. Between the verdict and the appeal sits a short, unforgiving window in which the trial judge can take the verdict away, cut it down, order the whole thing done again, or let it stand, and in which the loser must build the record that the court of appeals will later be permitted to review. Miss the window, or file the wrong motion, and the strongest argument you have may never be heard by anyone.

The short answer

Four motions do nearly all of the work after a federal civil trial.

Judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) under Rule 50. The motion says the evidence was so one-sided that no reasonable jury could have found as this one did. It must be made before the case goes to the jury, Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a), and renewed within 28 days after judgment under Rule 50(b). Skip either step and you have forfeited any sufficiency-of-the-evidence argument, in the district court and on appeal. Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394 (2006). The judge may not weigh the evidence or judge credibility. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, Inc., 530 U.S. 133 (2000).

New trial under Rule 59(a). The motion says the trial went wrong in a way that requires doing it over: the verdict is against the clear weight of the evidence, the damages are excessive or inadequate, the instructions or evidentiary rulings were wrong and prejudicial, or someone (a juror, a lawyer, a witness) misbehaved. The judge may weigh the evidence here, but must not simply substitute her view for the jury's. The motion is due 28 days after judgment and that deadline cannot be extended. Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b)(2).

Motion to alter or amend under Rule 59(e). The motion asks the judge to fix a manifest error of law or fact in the judgment itself, account for newly discovered evidence, or apply an intervening change in controlling law. Also 28 days, also unextendable, and not a vehicle for rearguing what was already decided.

Relief from judgment under Rule 60(b). The safety valve. Six enumerated grounds (mistake and excusable neglect, newly discovered evidence, fraud, a void judgment, a satisfied or no-longer-equitable judgment, and "any other reason that justifies relief"), each with its own time limit and each read narrowly because finality matters. Fed. R. Civ. P. 60.

Two more things decide the shape of what follows. A timely Rule 50(b), 59, or 52(b) motion, or a Rule 60 motion filed within 28 days, restarts the 30-day appeal clock when the court rules on it; an untimely one does not. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4). And each motion carries its own standard of appellate review: a JMOL ruling is reviewed de novo, while new trial and Rule 60(b) rulings are reviewed only for abuse of discretion. The motion you choose therefore chooses your appeal.

The map: which motion does what

The table understates one point. These motions are not alternatives. The losing defendant in a jury case will usually file a combined Rule 50(b) and Rule 59 motion, arguing in the alternative, and the rules are built for exactly that. Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b) expressly allows the renewed motion to "include an alternative or joint request for a new trial under Rule 59."

The legal framework: where the rules come from

The post-trial rules sit on top of the Seventh Amendment, which preserves the right to jury trial in suits at common law and adds that "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law." That second clause, the Reexamination Clause, is the reason the judge may not simply rewrite a verdict she dislikes, the reason remittitur must be offered as a choice rather than imposed, and the reason federal courts cannot add to an inadequate award. Every doctrine in this article is, at bottom, an accommodation between that clause and the judge's duty to prevent a verdict with no lawful basis.

The rules themselves are short. Rule 50 governs judgment as a matter of law in jury trials and the conditional rulings that accompany it. Rule 59 governs new trials and motions to alter or amend; its 28-day deadlines are made unextendable by Rule 6(b)(2), which forbids the court to extend the time to act under Rules 50(b) and (d), 52(b), 59(b), (d), and (e), and 60(b). Rule 52 governs findings in bench trials and the motion to amend them. Fed. R. Civ. P. 52. Rule 60 governs relief from judgment. Rule 58 governs how and when a judgment is "entered," which is the event from which every one of these clocks runs. Fed. R. Civ. P. 58. Rule 62 governs stays of execution and the bond that buys one. Fed. R. Civ. P. 62. Rule 49 governs special verdicts and the inconsistent-answer problems that produce new trials. Fed. R. Civ. P. 49. Rule 51 governs the objections to instructions that must be made before the jury retires if the instruction is to be challenged afterward. Fed. R. Civ. P. 51.

Three statutes matter. 28 U.S.C. § 2107 sets the 30-day (60-day if the United States is a party) time to appeal, which is why that deadline is jurisdictional rather than merely mandatory. Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007). 28 U.S.C. § 2111 codifies harmless error, which is the reason most trial errors do not produce new trials. And 28 U.S.C. § 1961 sets post-judgment interest, which runs from entry of judgment whether or not post-trial motions are pending, and which is the quiet reason a losing defendant should think hard before filing motions whose only purpose is delay.

For the treatise reader, the standard references are Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §§ 2521-2540 (Rule 50), §§ 2801-2821 (Rule 59), and §§ 2851-2873 (Rule 60), and Moore's Federal Practice chapters 50, 59, and 60. They are cited throughout where a proposition is settled but no single case states it cleanly.

Rule 50(a): judgment as a matter of law during trial

A Rule 50(a) motion, historically called a motion for directed verdict, asks the judge to take an issue away from the jury because "a reasonable jury would not have a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find for the party on that issue." Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a)(1). The motion may be made "at any time before the case is submitted to the jury," but only after the opposing party "has been fully heard on an issue." In practice that means the close of the plaintiff's case for a defendant's motion, and the close of all the evidence for anyone's motion.

What the motion must say

Rule 50(a)(2) requires the motion to "specify the judgment sought and the law and facts that entitle the movant to the judgment." The specificity requirement is not a formality. Its purpose, as the 1991 advisory committee note explains, is to give the opposing party notice of the claimed deficiency so that it can cure the gap by reopening and calling another witness. A motion that says "the plaintiff has failed to prove its case" preserves nothing. A motion that says "there is no evidence from which the jury could find that the defendant's sales caused the plaintiff's lost profits, because the only damages witness conceded on cross that she did not analyze causation" preserves the causation argument, and only the causation argument.

That matters because the renewed motion under Rule 50(b) is, as its name says, a renewal. The grounds argued after the verdict must have been argued before it. Courts apply this with varying strictness (some will allow a 50(b) argument that is "closely related" to what was raised under 50(a)), but no court will entertain a sufficiency theory that appears for the first time after the jury has spoken. The pre-verdict motion is therefore where the post-trial motion is actually written. The trial lawyer who dictates a two-sentence 50(a) motion at the close of evidence has decided, probably without meaning to, what the appellate lawyer will be permitted to argue a year later.

The standard: Reeves and the whole record

The Supreme Court set the standard in Reeves. The question under Rule 50 is the same as the question under Rule 56: whether the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986). In answering it, the court "must review all of the evidence in the record," but "must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party, and it may not make credibility determinations or weigh the evidence." Reeves, 530 U.S. at 150. The court must disregard evidence favorable to the moving party that the jury was not required to believe, which in practice means the movant's own witnesses' testimony unless it is uncontradicted, unimpeached, and comes from a disinterested source.

Reeves itself shows what that means. A 57-year-old supervisor was fired, the employer said, for failing to keep accurate attendance records. The jury found age discrimination. The Fifth Circuit reversed, reasoning that even if the employer's stated reason was false, the plaintiff had not introduced enough additional evidence of discriminatory intent. The Supreme Court reversed again and reinstated the verdict: a jury that disbelieves the employer's explanation may infer discrimination from that disbelief together with the prima facie case, and the court of appeals had impermissibly weighed the evidence and credited the employer's witnesses. The lesson for Rule 50 practice is that the judge asks whether a rational path to the verdict exists in the record, not whether it is the path the judge would have taken.

The standard is deliberately hard to meet, because of the Reexamination Clause. Judgment as a matter of law is proper only where there is a complete absence of evidence on an essential element, or where the evidence for the movant is so overwhelming that no reasonable juror could find otherwise. Where the case turns on which witness to believe, Rule 50 does not apply, and the remedy, if any, is a new trial.

Timing within the trial, and the judge's options

Most defense lawyers move at the close of the plaintiff's case and renew at the close of all the evidence. The second motion is not strictly required where the first was made, but the practice is universal because the evidence changes and the record should show the motion directed at the final state of the proof. A plaintiff with the burden of proof rarely obtains JMOL on its own claim, but can and should move on affirmative defenses that the defendant has failed to support, and the same specificity rule applies.

The judge has three choices on a Rule 50(a) motion: grant it, deny it, or say nothing and let the case go to the jury. The third is the usual course on a close question and is expressly contemplated by Rule 50(b): if the court does not grant the motion, "the court is considered to have submitted the action to the jury subject to the court's later deciding the legal questions raised by the motion." Letting the jury decide first is also the prudent course, because if the judge later grants JMOL and the court of appeals disagrees, the verdict can simply be reinstated; if the judge directs a verdict and is reversed, the whole trial must be repeated.

Rule 50(b): the renewed motion after the verdict

If the court did not grant the pre-verdict motion, the movant "may file a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and may include an alternative or joint request for a new trial under Rule 59" no later than 28 days after the entry of judgment, or, if the motion addresses a jury issue not decided by a verdict (a hung jury, for instance), 28 days after the jury was discharged. Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b). The standard is identical to the Rule 50(a) standard. The court may (1) allow judgment on the verdict, (2) order a new trial, or (3) direct the entry of judgment as a matter of law.

The deadline is absolute

Rule 6(b)(2) says that the court "must not extend the time to act under Rules 50(b) and (d), 52(b), 59(b), (d), and (e), and 60(b)." That is unusual language in a code that otherwise lets judges extend almost anything for good cause, and courts take it literally. A stipulation between the parties does not help. A judge's order purporting to grant an extension does not help, although some circuits have held that the opposing party forfeits the objection by failing to raise it before the district court rules. The safe assumption is that a Rule 50(b) motion filed on day 29 is a nullity: it will not be decided, it will not preserve the sufficiency argument, and it will not restart the appeal clock.

The 28 days run from the "entry of judgment," which is defined by Rule 58, not from the verdict. Judgment on a jury verdict must be set out in a separate document, and it is "entered" when it is both set out in that document and recorded on the civil docket. If no separate document is ever filed, judgment is deemed entered 150 days after the docket entry of the decision. Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(c). A motion filed after the verdict but before judgment is entered is timely; the rules say "no later than" 28 days after entry precisely so that an early motion counts. The practical rule is to calendar from the verdict, confirm the docket daily, and never rely on the 150-day backstop for anything other than a reason to ask the clerk why there is no judgment.

Unitherm: no renewed motion, no appeal

The consequence of skipping the renewed motion is severe and settled. In Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394 (2006), the defendant in a patent and antitrust case moved for JMOL before the verdict, lost the verdict, and then filed no Rule 50(b) motion and no Rule 59 motion. The Federal Circuit nonetheless reviewed the sufficiency of the evidence and ordered a new trial. The Supreme Court reversed. A party that fails to renew its motion after the verdict has not given the district court the chance to exercise the discretion Rule 50(b) confers, and the court of appeals is "powerless" to review the sufficiency of the evidence, whether to direct judgment or to order a new trial. The rule applies even if the pre-verdict motion was made with perfect specificity.

Unitherm is the single most important case in this article because its consequence is total and its trigger is an omission. Every other mistake discussed here can be partly repaired. This one cannot.

Ortiz and Dupree: summary judgment does not carry over

A denial of summary judgment is not a final judgment and generally cannot be appealed after trial, because the question has been superseded by the trial record. In Ortiz v. Jordan, 562 U.S. 180 (2011), prison officials who lost a qualified immunity motion at summary judgment went to trial and lost. They had moved for judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a) twice during trial, but after the verdict they neither renewed the motion under Rule 50(b) nor asked for a new trial. They tried instead to appeal the summary judgment denial. The Court held that a party may not appeal an order denying summary judgment after a full trial on the merits; once trial has occurred, the sufficiency of the evidence must be tested under Rule 50(b), and without that motion the court of appeals had no warrant to disturb the verdict. Dupree v. Younger, 598 U.S. 729 (2023) carved out the purely legal question: an issue resolved at summary judgment on a question of law that does not depend on the facts developed at trial is preserved for appeal without a Rule 50 motion. The line between a "purely legal" issue and a "sufficiency" issue is, as the Court itself acknowledged, not always obvious, and the only safe course is to raise everything under Rule 50 anyway. See Federal Appellate Practice: Preserving Error, Standards of Review, and Briefs That Win for the appellate side of this rule, and Summary Judgment Under Rule 56: Winning and Surviving Before Trial for the motion that preceded it.

Weisgram: when the evidence that supported the verdict is thrown out

A recurring post-trial scenario in technical cases: the verdict rested on an expert whose testimony should have been excluded under Rule 702 and Daubert. If the expert goes, the verdict has no evidentiary basis. May the court of appeals direct entry of judgment for the defendant, or must it remand for a new trial so the plaintiff can try to find a better expert? In Weisgram v. Marley Co., 528 U.S. 440 (2000), the Court held that the court of appeals may direct entry of judgment as a matter of law when it determines that the expert testimony was erroneously admitted and the remaining evidence is insufficient. Rule 50 authorizes that disposition, and the plaintiff, who had every incentive to put on its best admissible case the first time, is not entitled to a second trial simply because the first one was built on inadmissible proof. The holding has two practical implications. First, a Daubert objection made and lost at trial is a sufficiency argument in waiting, and it should be renewed in the Rule 50(b) motion with the explicit point that, absent the expert, there is nothing left. Second, a plaintiff whose expert is shaky should not rely on a single opinion for an essential element. See Expert Witnesses After the 2023 Amendment to Rule 702: Daubert, Disclosure, and Cross-Examination and General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997), which sets the abuse-of-discretion standard for reviewing the admissibility ruling itself.

Rules 50(c), (d), and (e): the conditional rulings

Rule 50(c) solves a sequencing problem. If the court grants the renewed JMOL motion, it "must also conditionally rule on any motion for a new trial by determining whether a new trial should be granted if the judgment is later vacated or reversed." The conditional grant does not affect the finality of the judgment; it simply tells the court of appeals what should happen if it disagrees. If the court of appeals reverses the JMOL and a new trial was conditionally granted, the new trial proceeds unless the appellate court orders otherwise; if the new trial motion was conditionally denied, the appellee may assert error in that denial, and if the JMOL is reversed the case proceeds as the court of appeals directs. Rule 50(d) gives the party against whom JMOL was entered 28 days from entry of that judgment to file its own new trial motion. Rule 50(e) covers the mirror case: when the JMOL motion is denied and the verdict winner is the appellee, it may, as appellee, assert grounds entitling it to a new trial should the court of appeals conclude that the trial court erred in denying JMOL, and the appellate court may order a new trial, direct the trial court to decide whether one is warranted, or direct entry of judgment.

The practical consequence for the judge is that a Rule 50(b) order should always address the alternative new trial request expressly, and the practical consequence for the lawyer is that the combined motion should argue the new trial grounds fully rather than treating them as a throwaway. An appellate court that reverses a JMOL and finds no conditional ruling on new trial will usually remand for one, which costs another year.

Rule 59(a): the motion for a new trial

Rule 59(a)(1)(A) lets the court grant a new trial on all or some of the issues "for any reason for which a new trial has heretofore been granted in an action at law in federal court." That open-ended phrasing incorporates the common law of new trials, and the recognized grounds are a list rather than a standard. Fed. R. Civ. P. 59. The motion is due 28 days after entry of judgment, Rule 59(b), and the court may also order a new trial on its own initiative within the same 28 days, or for a reason not stated in a party's motion after giving notice and an opportunity to be heard, Rule 59(d).

The new trial motion differs from the JMOL motion in two respects that explain why the two are almost always filed together. First, the remedy is a new trial rather than judgment: the movant gets a second chance, not a win. Second, the standard is more lenient. On a new trial motion the judge may weigh the evidence and consider credibility, and need not view the record in the light most favorable to the verdict winner. A verdict can be supported by legally sufficient evidence and still be against the clear weight of it.

Against the weight of the evidence

The formulation varies by circuit, but the substance does not: the judge may grant a new trial where the verdict is against the clear or great weight of the evidence, is seriously erroneous, or would result in a miscarriage of justice. What the judge may not do is substitute her own view of the facts for the jury's simply because she would have decided differently. Courts are especially reluctant where the verdict turned on credibility, because the jury saw the witnesses and the judge's advantage over the jury on that score is nil. Wright & Miller § 2806 collects the formulations and the cautions. A judge who grants a new trial on weight-of-the-evidence grounds will be reviewed for abuse of discretion, and some circuits review such grants more closely than denials, precisely because a grant overrides a jury.

The practical test for the moving lawyer is whether the motion can be written without the word "credibility." If the argument is that the jury should have believed your witness rather than theirs, it will fail. If the argument is that the jury's verdict cannot be reconciled with documents whose authenticity nobody disputed, it has a chance.

Excessive or inadequate damages

A verdict that is excessive or inadequate is a classic new trial ground, and it is the one that produces remittitur, treated in the next section. Two framing points. First, the question of what standard governs excessiveness turns on the source of the claim. In a federal-question case, federal law supplies the standard. In a diversity case, the forum state's standard applies, because the standard for excessiveness is substantive for Erie purposes. That is the holding of Gasperini, discussed below. Second, a new trial on damages alone is permissible only where the damages issue is sufficiently separable from liability that trying it alone would not be unfair; where the amount suggests a compromise on liability, the whole case must be retried.

Errors in admitting evidence or instructing the jury

Evidentiary error and instructional error are the most common grounds, and the most commonly overestimated. Both require preservation at trial: a timely, specific objection or offer of proof for evidence, Fed. R. Evid. 103(a), and a specific objection on the record before the jury retires for instructions, Fed. R. Civ. P. 51(c). Rule 51(d)(2) permits review of unpreserved instructional error only for plain error affecting substantial rights, which in civil cases is close to never. And both require prejudice. Rule 61 directs the court to disregard "all errors and defects that do not affect any party's substantial rights," and § 2111 says the same to the court of appeals. The question is not whether the ruling was wrong but whether, on the whole record, it probably changed the result.

An instruction is erroneous if it misstates the law or, read as a whole with the other instructions, misleads the jury about the governing standard. Courts read the charge as a whole, so an imperfect sentence cured elsewhere in the charge will not do. An instruction that omits an element, shifts a burden, or states the wrong standard for willfulness or causation will. For the unfair-prejudice side of evidentiary error, see Federal Rule of Evidence 403 and Unfair Prejudice: A Practical Guide; for the instruction-drafting side, see Jury Trial Toolkit: Voir Dire, Openings, Exhibits, and Instructions.

Juror misconduct and the Rule 606(b) wall

A verdict tainted by juror misconduct can be set aside, but the proof problem is formidable. Fed. R. Evid. 606(b) forbids a juror from testifying, and bars the court from receiving a juror's affidavit, about any statement made or incident that occurred during deliberations, the effect of anything on any juror's vote, or any juror's mental processes. Three exceptions survive: a juror may testify that extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury's attention, that an outside influence was improperly brought to bear on any juror, or that a mistake was made in entering the verdict on the form.

The Supreme Court has enforced the rule strictly. In Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107 (1987), allegations that jurors drank alcohol and used drugs during the trial were held to be internal influences on which juror testimony was barred. In Warger v. Shauers, 574 U.S. 40 (2014), a civil case, the Court held that Rule 606(b) bars juror testimony offered to show that another juror lied during voir dire, even though the lie, if proven, would independently justify a new trial. The one constitutional exception is Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, 580 U.S. 206 (2017), which held that where a juror makes a clear statement that she relied on racial stereotypes or animus to convict a criminal defendant, the Sixth Amendment requires the court to consider the evidence. Whether and how Pena-Rodriguez extends to civil trials is unsettled; the safe assumption is that it is confined to its facts.

What this means in practice: a new trial motion based on juror misconduct must rest on evidence from outside the jury room (a bailiff's observation, a juror's social media post, a third party who spoke to a juror during trial), or on one of the three exceptions. Once an extraneous influence is shown, the court does not ask the jurors whether it affected them; it makes an objective assessment of the likely effect. And the motion must be made promptly. A party who learns of possible misconduct during trial and waits to see how the verdict comes out before raising it has forfeited the point.

Attorney misconduct

Improper argument, references to excluded evidence, appeals to regional or class prejudice, "golden rule" arguments asking jurors to put themselves in the plaintiff's shoes, and statements of personal belief in the client's case can all support a new trial. The test is whether the conduct was improper, whether it probably influenced the verdict, and whether a curative instruction cured it. Courts look at the whole trial: the frequency of the remarks, their relevance to the issues, the strength of the opposing case, and the size of the verdict. The preservation requirement is unforgiving. Counsel must object when the remark is made, or at the first opportunity outside the jury's presence, and should ask for a curative instruction or a mistrial on the record. A lawyer who sits through an improper closing without objecting, hoping the jury will see through it, cannot complain afterward that it did not.

Newly discovered evidence

A new trial may be granted for evidence discovered after trial, but only where the evidence existed at the time of trial, could not have been discovered earlier with reasonable diligence, is material rather than cumulative or merely impeaching, and would probably produce a different result. The same test governs Rule 60(b)(2), which is the vehicle if the evidence surfaces after the 28-day Rule 59 window but within a year. The "reasonable diligence" element is where most of these motions fail; a document that was in the opposing party's production, or a witness who could have been found with a public-records search, is not newly discovered.

Inconsistent verdicts and Rule 49

Rule 49 permits special verdicts (written findings on each issue of fact) and general verdicts accompanied by written questions. Fed. R. Civ. P. 49. The form chosen matters after the verdict. When the answers to written questions are consistent with each other but one or more is inconsistent with the general verdict, Rule 49(b)(3) lets the court approve a judgment according to the answers, send the jury back for further consideration, or order a new trial. When the answers are inconsistent with each other and at least one is also inconsistent with the general verdict, Rule 49(b)(4) forbids judgment and requires further deliberation or a new trial. For a special verdict under Rule 49(a), the court has a duty to reconcile the answers if any reasonable reading does so, and a new trial is proper only where the answers are irreconcilable.

The preservation rule is the trap. An inconsistency between a general verdict and written answers must be raised before the jury is discharged, when the problem can be fixed by sending the jury back; raising it afterward is too late. The circuits divide on whether the same rule applies to internally inconsistent special verdicts. The only safe practice is to read the verdict form carefully in the courtroom before the jury is excused, and to ask for a sidebar if anything does not add up. Related: the court's inherent power to recall a jury briefly after discharge to correct an error was recognized, with limits, in Dietz v. Bouldin, 579 U.S. 40 (2016), but the power is narrow and depends on the jurors not having dispersed or been exposed to outside influence.

A related problem arises with a general verdict on multiple theories where one theory lacked sufficient evidence. Where the court cannot tell which theory the jury relied on, a new trial is usually required, which is the practical reason defendants should insist on special interrogatories separating the theories and plaintiffs should resist them.

Remittitur, additur, and the Seventh Amendment

Remittitur is the device by which a court reduces an excessive verdict without retrying the case: it conditionally grants a new trial unless the plaintiff agrees to accept a specified lower amount. The plaintiff chooses. If she accepts, judgment is entered for the reduced sum and she may not appeal the reduction. If she refuses, the case is retried (usually on damages only), and she may challenge the remittitur order after the second trial.

Hetzel: the plaintiff must be given the choice

The choice is constitutionally required. In Hetzel v. Prince William County, 523 U.S. 208 (1998) (per curiam), the Fourth Circuit held a Title VII emotional distress award grossly excessive and remanded for recalculation. The district court reduced the award to $50,000 and, when the plaintiff declined it, ordered a new trial on damages; the Fourth Circuit then issued mandamus directing entry of judgment for the reduced amount. The Supreme Court summarily reversed: entering judgment for a lesser amount than the jury awarded, without the plaintiff's consent, is a reexamination of a jury's factual finding forbidden by the Seventh Amendment. The verdict winner must be allowed to choose a new trial. The rule applies to compensatory damages found by a jury; it does not apply where the reduction is required as a matter of law (a statutory cap, a legally unavailable category of damages, or an unconstitutional punitive award), because in those cases the court is not reexamining a fact but applying a legal limit.

Dimick: no additur in federal court

The mirror image is forbidden. In Dimick v. Schiedt, 293 U.S. 474 (1935), a sharply divided Court held that a federal judge may not deny a new trial on condition that the defendant agree to pay more than the jury awarded. Remittitur had a pedigree at common law in 1791; additur did not, and the Reexamination Clause freezes the common law as it then stood. Many states allow additur. Gasperini described Dimick as having rejected additur as unconstitutional, noting in a footnote that four dissenting Justices in Dimick had invited the question to be revisited; it has not been. A plaintiff with an inadequate verdict in federal court therefore has exactly one remedy: a new trial on damages, with all the risk that entails.

Gasperini: state standards in diversity cases

Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415 (1996) addressed what standard governs excessiveness when a federal court sits in diversity. New York had adopted by statute a "deviates materially from what would be reasonable compensation" standard, more searching than the federal "shocks the conscience" test. The Court held that the state standard is substantive for Erie purposes and must be applied by the federal district judge in ruling on a new trial motion, while the Seventh Amendment is accommodated by having the court of appeals review the district judge's ruling only for abuse of discretion rather than applying the state standard de novo. The holding has two practical consequences. In a diversity case, the excessiveness argument must be briefed under the forum state's law, which may be more or less generous than the federal formulation. And in every case, the district court's ruling is the ruling that matters, because appellate review of it is deferential.

The formulations: "shocks the conscience" and "maximum recovery"

Under federal law, an award is excessive if it is so large that it shocks the judicial conscience, is monstrously excessive, has no rational connection to the evidence, or clearly exceeds the amount any reasonable jury could have awarded. The circuits express the test differently but apply it similarly, and comparisons to awards in similar cases are commonly used as a check. Once a court decides that the award is excessive, it must choose the remittitur figure. Most circuits use the "maximum recovery rule": the court reduces the award to the highest amount the jury could reasonably have awarded on the evidence, on the theory that any lower figure would substitute the judge's valuation for the jury's. A minority of courts reduce to what the judge considers a reasonable figure, and a few remit to the amount the evidence clearly supports. The choice of formula can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the motion should argue for the one the circuit applies with explicit calculation. For the evidentiary foundation that determines what the "maximum" is, see Proving Damages in Civil Litigation: Certainty, Causation, and the Numbers That Survive.

Punitive damages: constitutional review is not remittitur

Punitive damages are reviewed on two tracks, and conflating them is a common error.

The first track is ordinary excessiveness under Rule 59 and the common law, subject to Hetzel: the court finds the award excessive on the evidence, and the plaintiff chooses between a remittitur and a new trial. The Supreme Court confirmed in Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U.S. 257 (1989), that the Excessive Fines Clause does not apply to punitive awards between private parties and that federal courts review such awards under the ordinary abuse-of-discretion framework, while in Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, 512 U.S. 415 (1994), the Court held that due process requires some judicial review of the amount of a punitive award; a state that forbids it altogether violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

The second track is substantive due process. BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559 (1996) held that a grossly excessive punitive award violates due process and identified three guideposts: the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct, the ratio between the punitive award and the actual or potential harm, and the difference between the award and the civil or criminal penalties authorized for comparable conduct. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408 (2003) sharpened the guideposts: reprehensibility is the most important; few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio will satisfy due process; a ratio of 4:1 is close to the line; and where compensatory damages are substantial, a ratio of 1:1 may be the limit. A defendant may not be punished for conduct outside the state or for harm to non-parties. Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U.S. 346 (2007), added that due process forbids punishing a defendant for harm to strangers to the litigation, and that on request the court must protect against that risk, usually through an instruction. And Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471 (2008), exercising the Court's common-law authority in a maritime case, capped punitive damages at a 1:1 ratio to compensatories for that body of law, with reasoning that defendants cite in every ratio argument.

The two tracks differ in three ways that matter after a verdict. The standard of review is different: Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U.S. 424 (2001), held that a court of appeals reviews the constitutionality of a punitive award de novo, because the amount is not a "fact" found by the jury in the Seventh Amendment sense but a legal judgment about the limits of punishment. The remedy is different: because an unconstitutional award rests on legal error, the court may reduce it to the constitutional maximum outright, without offering the plaintiff a new trial, since Hetzel protects only fact-finding. And the argument is different: the constitutional argument is about ratios, reprehensibility, and comparable penalties, while the common-law argument is about the evidence and the conscience of the court. A defendant should make both, in that order, and a plaintiff should respond to both separately. For the broader remedies context, see Civil Damages Toolkit: Contract, Tort, Statutory, and Punitive Recovery.

Rule 59(e): altering or amending the judgment

The whole text of Rule 59(e) is one sentence: a motion to alter or amend a judgment "must be filed no later than 28 days after the entry of the judgment." Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). Everything else comes from case law, and the case law is unusually consistent. Courts grant the motion to correct a clear error of law or fact, to prevent manifest injustice, to account for evidence that was newly discovered or previously unavailable, or to apply an intervening change in controlling law. 11 Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2810.1, is the standard treatment, and nearly every circuit recites some version of its list.

What the motion is not

The negative rule matters more than the positive one. Rule 59(e) "may not be used to relitigate old matters, or to raise arguments or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment." Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 554 U.S. 471, 485 n.5 (2008) (quoting Wright & Miller § 2810.1). The occasion for that footnote was a defendant that raised a statutory preemption argument against punitive damages thirteen months after the stipulated deadline for post-trial motions; whatever kind of motion it was supposed to be, the Court observed, "it was very, very late." Banister v. Davis, 590 U.S. 504 (2020), a habeas case, gives the best modern description: Rule 59(e) is "a one-time effort to bring alleged errors in a just-issued decision" to the court's attention before a single appeal, confined to "matters properly encompassed in a decision on the merits," with a 28-day window and no possibility of an extension. Courts "will not address new arguments or evidence that the moving party could have raised before the decision issued."

The practical translation: Rule 59(e) is the place to say "the judgment the clerk entered does not do what the verdict and the law require." It is not the place to say "the jury got it wrong" (that is Rule 59(a)) or "please reconsider the summary judgment ruling from last spring."

What it is good for after a jury trial

After a verdict, the useful Rule 59(e) motions are usually about the judgment's form and arithmetic rather than its foundation:

• Caps and offsets. The judgment ignores a statutory damages cap, a settlement credit from a co-defendant, or a setoff the jury was never asked to calculate.
• Double recovery. The jury awarded overlapping sums on two theories for one injury (lost profits on a Lanham Act claim and the same lost profits on a state unfair competition claim), and the judgment adds them together.
• Interest. The judgment omits or miscalculates prejudgment interest. A post-judgment motion for discretionary prejudgment interest is a Rule 59(e) motion, because it asks the court to revisit part of the merits. Osterneck v. Ernst & Whinney, 489 U.S. 169 (1989).
• Equitable terms. The injunction in the judgment is missing a term, or its language is broader or narrower than the findings support.
• Intervening law. The Supreme Court or the circuit decides a case between verdict and judgment, or within the 28 days after, that changes the governing standard.

Purely clerical slips, such as a transposed figure, a misnamed party, or arithmetic that makes the judgment say something the court did not intend, belong under Rule 60(a), which has no deadline. 11 Wright & Miller § 2854. Substantive changes belong under Rule 59(e), which does.

Labels do not control, but deadlines do

The rules do not recognize a "motion for reconsideration" of a final judgment by that name. Courts look at substance. A motion that questions the correctness of the judgment and is filed within 28 days is treated as a Rule 59(e) motion; the same motion filed on day 29 is treated under Rule 60(b), which has narrower grounds and does not reset the appeal clock. Banister noted that Rule 60(b) motions filed within the 28-day window are commonly treated as Rule 59(e) motions for exactly this reason.

The other distinction that matters for the appeal clock is between motions that go to the merits and motions that are collateral. A request for attorney's fees under a fee-shifting statute is collateral and is not a Rule 59(e) motion. White v. New Hampshire Department of Employment Security, 455 U.S. 445 (1982). A judgment on the merits is final even though fees remain to be decided, whether the fee claim rests on a statute, Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 486 U.S. 196 (1988), or on a contract, Ray Haluch Gravel Co. v. Central Pension Fund, 571 U.S. 177 (2014). The 30-day appeal clock therefore runs on the merits while the fee motion is still being briefed, a trap discussed further below.

Bench trials: Rule 52(b)

After a bench trial, the analog is Rule 52(b): within 28 days after entry of judgment, a party may ask the court to amend its findings or make additional findings and to amend the judgment accordingly, and the motion may accompany a Rule 59 motion. Fed. R. Civ. P. 52. Two features distinguish bench-trial practice. First, no Rule 50 motion is needed to preserve a sufficiency challenge: Rule 52(a)(5) lets a party question the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the findings on appeal whether or not it objected or moved to amend below. Second, the findings will be reviewed only for clear error, with due regard for the trial judge's opportunity to judge credibility, Rule 52(a)(6), and that deference extends to findings drawn from documents as well as live testimony. Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564 (1985).

A Rule 52(b) motion is therefore most valuable not as a way to win the argument but as a way to make the record reviewable: asking the court to make an express finding on an element it skipped, or to state the basis for a damages figure, so that the court of appeals reviews what was actually decided rather than guessing. For the jury-versus-bench choice that sets all of this up, see Bench Trial vs. Jury Trial Issues in Trademark Litigation: A Practical Guide.

Rule 60: relief from a final judgment

Rule 60 is the exception to finality, and it is written and read as an exception. Its subdivisions do different jobs and carry different clocks.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 60. A Rule 60(b) motion "does not affect the judgment's finality or suspend its operation," Rule 60(c)(2). It does not stay enforcement, and unless it is filed within 28 days of judgment it does not restart the appeal clock.

Rule 60(b)(1): excusable neglect and the judge's own mistakes

"Excusable neglect" is an equitable concept. The leading case, Pioneer Investment Services Co. v. Brunswick Associates Ltd. Partnership, 507 U.S. 380 (1993), arose under a bankruptcy rule but supplies the framework courts use under Rule 60(b)(1) and under Appellate Rule 4(a)(5): the danger of prejudice to the other side, the length of the delay and its effect on the proceedings, the reason for the delay (including whether it was within the movant's reasonable control), and whether the movant acted in good faith. Pioneer also holds that clients are accountable for their lawyers' acts and omissions, so "my lawyer missed it" begins the analysis rather than ending it. Courts are most forgiving of defaults entered early in a case and least forgiving of strategic choices that did not work out.

Kemp v. United States, 596 U.S. 528 (2022), settled a long-running split over whether "mistake" in Rule 60(b)(1) covers a judge's errors of law. It does. The movant in Kemp argued that the district court had made a legal error in an earlier ruling and, because more than a year had passed, invoked Rule 60(b)(6). The Court held that the claim was one of "mistake" under (b)(1), that the one-year limit applied, and that (b)(6) was unavailable because it covers only reasons not addressed by the first five clauses. After Kemp, a motion arguing that the judgment rests on legal error must be filed within a reasonable time and never more than a year after judgment, and the realistic window is usually the 28-day Rule 59(e) period. A court asked to correct its own legal error after the appeal time has run will want to know why the movant did not appeal.

Rule 60(b)(2) and (3): new evidence and the other side's misconduct

Rule 60(b)(2) applies the newly discovered evidence test described in the Rule 59 section, with one structural difference: the evidence must be evidence that, "with reasonable diligence, could not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial under Rule 59(b)." The rule extends the window from 28 days to a year, but only for evidence the movant could not have found sooner. 11 Wright & Miller § 2859.

Rule 60(b)(3) reaches "fraud (whether previously called intrinsic or extrinsic), misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing party." Most circuits require clear and convincing proof and a showing that the misconduct prevented the movant from fully and fairly presenting its case; the movant usually need not prove that the result would have been different. 11 Wright & Miller § 2860. The paradigm in intellectual property cases is the withheld document: the email that should have been produced in discovery and that contradicts what the opposing party's witness told the jury.

Rule 60(b)(4) and (5): void judgments, and judgments that have outlived their reasons

A judgment is void under Rule 60(b)(4) only in the rare case where it rests on a certain type of jurisdictional error or on a due process violation that deprived a party of notice or the opportunity to be heard. United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, 559 U.S. 260 (2010). A judgment that is wrong, even badly wrong, is not void, and a party that had actual notice and an opportunity to object but stayed silent cannot use (b)(4) to undo the result. Courts apply the reasonable-time requirement leniently to void judgments, because a void judgment has no force to begin with.

Rule 60(b)(5) matters most in cases that end with an injunction, which includes many intellectual property cases. A party bound by an ongoing decree may seek modification when a significant change in facts or law makes compliance substantially more onerous, unworkable, or detrimental to the public interest. Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367 (1992); Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997); Horne v. Flores, 557 U.S. 433 (2009). A permanent injunction aimed at a product design the defendant has since abandoned, or a trademark injunction protecting a mark the plaintiff later stopped using, is the kind of decree (b)(5) was written for.

Rule 60(b)(6): extraordinary circumstances

The catchall is available only when no other clause applies and "extraordinary circumstances" justify reopening the judgment. Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U.S. 847 (1988); Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524 (2005). The Supreme Court's cases mark the boundaries:

• A deliberate choice not to appeal is not extraordinary. In Ackermann v. United States, 340 U.S. 193 (1950), a couple chose not to appeal a denaturalization judgment rather than sell their home to pay for it; a relative tried with them appealed and won. The Court refused relief: "free, calculated, deliberate choices are not to be relieved from" because hindsight shows they were wrong.
• Being unable to defend at all can be. In Klapprott v. United States, 335 U.S. 601 (1949), a default denaturalization judgment entered while the defendant was ill, jailed, and without a lawyer was reopened on a petition filed more than four years later.
• A judge who should have stepped aside. In Liljeberg, the trial judge was a trustee of a university with a financial stake in the outcome. The Court affirmed vacatur under (b)(6), weighing the risk of injustice to the parties, the risk of injustice in other cases, and the risk of undermining public confidence in the judicial process.
• A change in decisional law, standing alone, is not enough. Gonzalez held that an intervening reinterpretation of a limitations statute did not justify reopening a final judgment, particularly where the movant had not pursued the point diligently.
• A trial infected by racial testimony was. In Buck v. Davis, 580 U.S. 100 (2017), the defendant's own lawyer had called an expert who told the jury that the defendant's race made him more likely to be dangerous. The Court held the circumstances extraordinary and relief warranted.

The Court reinforced the standard in 2025 in BLOM Bank SAL v. Honickman, holding that a plaintiff who wants to reopen a dismissal so that it can amend its complaint must satisfy Rule 60(b)(6) on its own terms; the liberal amendment standard of Rule 15(a) does not lower the bar. 11 Wright & Miller § 2864 collects the lower-court applications. The lesson for post-trial practice is that (b)(6) is not a second deadline. It is the narrowest door in the rules, and a motion that could have been brought under another clause, or raised on appeal, will not fit through it.

Timing, the independent action, and motions during an appeal

The one-year limit for (b)(1) through (b)(3) is an outer limit, not a safe harbor. Every Rule 60(b) motion must also be made "within a reasonable time," Rule 60(c)(1), and a motion filed eleven months after judgment without an explanation for the delay can be denied on that ground alone. The one-year limit cannot be extended. Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b)(2).

Rule 60(d) preserves three powers the time limits do not reach: an independent action to relieve a party from a judgment, relief under 28 U.S.C. § 1655 for a defendant who was not personally notified, and the power to set aside a judgment for fraud on the court. The independent action is reserved for cases where relief is needed to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice. United States v. Beggerly, 524 U.S. 38 (1998). Fraud on the court is fraud that corrupts the judicial process itself rather than one party's presentation. The classic example is Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U.S. 238 (1944): a patentee's officers and lawyers wrote a trade-journal article praising the invention, arranged for it to be published under the name of an apparently disinterested expert, used it to get the patent, and then relied on it to win an infringement appeal. The Court set that judgment aside a dozen years later. Perjury by a witness, without more, usually does not qualify; the misconduct must involve an officer of the court or an attack on the integrity of the tribunal. 11 Wright & Miller § 2870.

A Rule 60(b) motion can be filed while an appeal is pending, and the district court may consider it without first asking the court of appeals for leave. Standard Oil Co. of California v. United States, 429 U.S. 17 (1976). Because the pending appeal divests the district court of power to grant the motion, the mechanism is the indicative ruling: the district court may defer the motion, deny it, or state that it would grant it (or that it raises a substantial issue) if the court of appeals remands for that purpose. Fed. R. Civ. P. 62.1; Fed. R. App. P. 12.1. A party that discovers concealed evidence while its appeal is being briefed should file in the district court promptly, request an indicative ruling, and notify the circuit clerk.

After judgment: the appeal clock, stays, interest, costs, and fees

How post-trial motions move the appeal deadline

The notice of appeal is due 30 days after entry of judgment, or 60 days if the United States or a federal officer or agency is a party. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1). Because that period is set by statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2107, it is jurisdictional: no court can excuse a late notice on equitable grounds. Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205 (2007).

Appellate Rule 4(a)(4)(A) restarts the clock. If any party files one of six motions "within the time allowed by" the Civil Rules, the time to appeal runs for all parties from the entry of the order disposing of the last such motion. The six are: a renewed JMOL motion under Rule 50(b); a motion to amend or make additional findings under Rule 52(b); a fee motion under Rule 54, but only if the district court extends the appeal time under Rule 58(e); a motion to alter or amend under Rule 59; a new trial motion under Rule 59; and a Rule 60 motion filed within 28 days after judgment. Three consequences follow.

1. The reset benefits everyone. The verdict winner's time to cross-appeal is also suspended while the loser's motion is pending.
2. An early notice waits. A notice of appeal filed after judgment but before the motions are decided becomes effective when the last one is decided. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(B)(i). That rule replaced the old regime under which such a notice was a nullity, Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56 (1982), and the old regime still catches lawyers who learned it in law school.
3. New rulings need a new notice. To challenge the order deciding the motion, or an amended judgment, a party must file a notice of appeal or an amended notice within 30 days of that order. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4)(B)(ii). The notice filed before the ruling does not reach it.

The untimely-motion trap

A post-trial motion filed late does not restart anything. The 2016 amendment to Appellate Rule 4(a)(4)(A) added the words "within the time allowed by those rules" to resolve a circuit split, and the committee note explains that a late motion does not qualify even if the district court purported to extend the deadline, the other side consented, or nobody objected. The rule is old in substance: Browder v. Director, Department of Corrections, 434 U.S. 257 (1978), held that an untimely Rule 59 motion did not toll the appeal period, and the appeal filed after its denial came too late.

The trap is that the motion's own deadline and the appeal's deadline behave differently. Rule 6(b)(2) and the 28-day limits are claim-processing rules, not jurisdictional ones, because they appear in court rules rather than statutes. Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443 (2004); Eberhart v. United States, 546 U.S. 12 (2005); Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, 583 U.S. 17 (2017). That means an opponent who fails to object can forfeit the untimeliness defense, and the district court may decide a late motion on its merits. But mandatory claim-processing rules are not subject to equitable tolling when the text forbids it, Nutraceutical Corp. v. Lambert, 586 U.S. 188 (2019), and the appeal clock never stopped. A party can therefore win a ruling on a day-29 motion and discover that its time to appeal the underlying judgment expired weeks earlier. The only safe practice is to treat day 28 as a wall, file the notice of appeal on time if there is any doubt, and never rely on a stipulated or court-ordered extension.

If the appeal deadline is missed, two narrow statutory escapes exist. The district court may extend the time on a motion filed within 30 days after the deadline for excusable neglect or good cause, Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(5), and may reopen the time for 14 days if the party never received notice of the judgment, on a motion filed within 180 days of entry or 14 days of receiving notice, whichever is earlier, Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(6); § 2107(c). Pioneer supplies the excusable-neglect standard. Neither escape is something to plan around.

Rule 58: the separate document and the 150-day backstop

Every clock above runs from "entry of judgment," and Rule 58 defines it. A judgment must be set out in a separate document, except for orders disposing of motions under Rules 50(b), 52(b), 54, 59, and 60. Fed. R. Civ. P. 58(a). Where a separate document is required, judgment is entered when it is set out in that document and entered on the civil docket, or, if no separate document is ever prepared, 150 days after the decision is entered on the docket. Rule 58(c)(2); Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(7). The parties can waive the separate document requirement, and a court of appeals may treat an order as final without one, Bankers Trust Co. v. Mallis, 435 U.S. 381 (1978); a failure to prepare it does not invalidate an appeal from the order, Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(7)(B).

The practical rules are simple. Ask for entry of judgment on a separate document as soon as the verdict is in, Rule 58(d). Calendar every deadline from the docket entry of that document, not from the verdict, the oral ruling, or the date you received notice. And treat the 150-day backstop as a reason to call the clerk, not as a deadline you intend to use.

Rule 58(e) adds one more lever. Ordinarily the entry of judgment may not be delayed, nor the time to appeal extended, to tax costs or award fees. But if a timely Rule 54(d)(2) fee motion is pending, the court may, before a notice of appeal becomes effective, order that the motion has the same effect under Appellate Rule 4(a)(4) as a timely Rule 59 motion. A party that wants the merits and the fee award reviewed in a single appeal should ask for that order expressly.

Stays of execution and the supersedeas bond

A money judgment is automatically stayed for 30 days after entry unless the court orders otherwise. Fed. R. Civ. P. 62(a). After that, the judgment creditor can begin execution, which in federal court follows the procedure of the forum state, unless the debtor has obtained a stay. Since the 2018 amendments, a party may obtain a stay "at any time after judgment is entered" by providing a bond or other security; the stay takes effect when the court approves the security and lasts for the time the security specifies. Rule 62(b). A single bond can therefore cover both the post-trial motion period and the appeal.

Three practical points. First, the amount: local rules and practice usually require the full judgment plus a margin for costs, interest, and delay, and many districts state the margin as a percentage of the judgment. Courts have discretion to accept alternative security (a letter of credit, an escrow, a lien on specific assets) or, rarely, to reduce the bond when the debtor's ability to pay is beyond question or a full bond is impossible to obtain. Second, the timing: surety underwriting for a seven- or eight-figure judgment takes weeks, sureties often demand full collateral, and premiums commonly run in the low single-digit percentages of the bond amount per year. The bond process should start the day of the verdict, not the day the automatic stay expires. Third, the exceptions: an injunction, a receivership, and a judgment directing an accounting in a patent case are not stayed automatically, Rule 62(c), and a stay of an injunction pending appeal requires a motion, ordinarily filed first in the district court, Rule 62(d); Fed. R. App. P. 8. The court weighs the familiar factors: the likelihood of success on appeal, irreparable injury to the applicant, injury to the other parties, and the public interest. Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770 (1987); Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418 (2009). For what the creditor does if there is no stay, see Collecting a Judgment: Discovery in Aid of Execution, Liens, Levies, and Garnishment and the Judgment Enforcement and Collections Toolkit.

Post-judgment and prejudgment interest

Interest on a federal money judgment runs from the date of entry at a rate equal to the weekly average one-year constant maturity Treasury yield for the calendar week before the judgment, computed daily and compounded annually. 28 U.S.C. § 1961. It runs whether or not post-trial motions or an appeal are pending, and it does not wait for the bond. Interest runs from the judgment, not the verdict, and when a damages judgment is set aside because the evidence did not support it, interest runs only from the later judgment that is legally sufficient. Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. v. Bonjorno, 494 U.S. 827 (1990). On an eight-figure judgment, the difference between those two dates is real money, and it is one of the quieter stakes of a remittitur fight.

Prejudgment interest is a different animal. It is governed by the substantive law of the claim (state law in most diversity cases, the federal statute in federal-question cases), and it must be requested before judgment or by a timely Rule 59(e) motion, Osterneck, 489 U.S. at 175-76. In patent cases, prejudgment interest on the damages award should ordinarily be granted absent a justification such as undue delay by the patentee. General Motors Corp. v. Devex Corp., 461 U.S. 648 (1983).

Costs and attorney's fees

Costs other than attorney's fees "should be allowed to the prevailing party" unless a statute, rule, or court order provides otherwise. Fed. R. Civ. P. 54(d)(1). The clerk taxes them on 14 days' notice, and a party may move for review within the next 7 days. The categories are those listed in 28 U.S.C. § 1920: clerk and marshal fees, transcripts necessarily obtained for use in the case, printing and witness fees, exemplification and copies necessarily obtained, docket fees, and compensation of court-appointed experts and interpreters. The Supreme Court reads the list narrowly. Interpreter compensation covers oral translation, not document translation, because taxable costs are "modest in scope." Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd., 566 U.S. 560 (2012). Expert witness fees are limited to the statutory witness allowance absent explicit authority. Crawford Fitting Co. v. J.T. Gibbons, Inc., 482 U.S. 437 (1987). Even the Copyright Act's "full costs" means only the categories in §§ 1821 and 1920, which is why Oracle could not recover millions in expert and e-discovery expenses after its verdict. Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., 586 U.S. 334 (2019).

Attorney's fees require a motion filed within 14 days after entry of judgment unless a statute or order provides otherwise, specifying the judgment and the basis for the award and stating the amount or a fair estimate. Rule 54(d)(2)(B). Missing that deadline forfeits fees that a statute would otherwise allow. The amount is usually set by the lodestar, reasonable hours times a reasonable rate, adjusted for the results obtained, Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424 (1983), and enhancements above the lodestar are reserved for rare circumstances. Perdue v. Kenny A., 559 U.S. 542 (2010). Do not forget Rule 68: if the plaintiff rejected an offer of judgment and the judgment finally obtained is not more favorable, the plaintiff must pay the costs incurred after the offer, and where the underlying statute defines fees as part of costs, those costs include fees. Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1 (1985). The comparison is made against the judgment the plaintiff finally obtains, which after an accepted remittitur is the reduced figure, one more reason a defendant with an unaccepted offer on the table should seek one. For the full treatment, see Attorneys Fees and Costs: The American Rule and Its Many Exceptions and Preparing and Opposing a Fee Petition: A Practical Guide.

Standards of review: the motion you file chooses your appeal

Three entries deserve comment. "Abuse of discretion" is not a single standard but a deferential posture that still corrects legal error: a district court "by definition abuses its discretion when it makes an error of law." Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81 (1996); see Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552 (1988). Harmless error places the burden on the party seeking reversal: "He who seeks to have a judgment set aside because of an erroneous ruling carries the burden of showing that prejudice resulted." Palmer v. Hoffman, 318 U.S. 109 (1943); 28 U.S.C. § 2111. And an order granting a new trial is interlocutory and not immediately appealable; mandamus is almost never available to review it, Allied Chemical Corp. v. Daflon, Inc., 449 U.S. 33 (1980), so the party that lost the verdict and then won a new trial cannot be forced into an immediate appeal, and the party that lost the new trial motion must try the case again and raise the error afterward. For the full map of what can be appealed before final judgment, see Interlocutory Appeals and Mandamus: Getting Appellate Review Before Final Judgment.

In patent cases, the Federal Circuit applies the law of the regional circuit to procedural questions such as the JMOL and new trial standards, while applying its own law to patent-specific questions. See, for example, Finjan, Inc. v. Secure Computing Corp., 626 F.3d 1197 (Fed. Cir. 2010). A post-trial brief in a patent case should therefore cite the regional circuit's formulation of the new trial standard and the Federal Circuit's law on damages apportionment and claim scope.

Post-verdict relief in intellectual property cases

In an intellectual property case the jury's verdict is often only half the judgment. Injunctions, enhanced damages, profits adjustments, and fees are decided by the judge after the verdict, usually on motions filed in the same 28-day window or within the 14 days Rule 54(d)(2) allows for fees. The verdict winner who treats the verdict as the finish line leaves money and leverage on the table, and the verdict loser who ignores these motions can see a seven-figure verdict become an eight-figure judgment.

Permanent injunctions

The Patent Act and the Lanham Act authorize injunctions according to the principles of equity, and the Copyright Act on such terms as the court deems reasonable. In each regime the starting point is now the four-factor test of eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 388 (2006): irreparable injury, inadequacy of legal remedies, the balance of hardships, and the public interest, with no presumption that infringement automatically warrants an injunction. 35 U.S.C. § 283; 17 U.S.C. § 502. Trademark law is the exception on one point. Since the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, a plaintiff seeking a permanent injunction is entitled to a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm once a violation is found. 15 U.S.C. § 1116. After eBay, permanent injunctions in patent cases go mainly to direct competitors who can show lost market share; licensors and non-practicing entities usually get money instead.

Two procedural details matter. A permanent injunction is not stayed by the automatic 30-day stay of Rule 62(a); Rule 62(c) carves injunctions out, so the defendant who wants breathing room must move for a stay pending appeal under Rule 62(d) and Appellate Rule 8. And the injunction's terms must satisfy Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(d), which requires an order to state its terms specifically and describe the restrained acts in reasonable detail. A vague injunction is an invitation to a contempt fight. See Contempt and Enforcing Injunctions: Civil, Criminal, and What an Order Actually Compels.

Ongoing royalties and supplemental damages

When a court denies a permanent injunction in a patent case, it may award an ongoing royalty for post-judgment infringement instead. Paice LLC v. Toyota Motor Corp., 504 F.3d 1293 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Paice also teaches the procedure: the court should ordinarily give the parties a chance to negotiate a license first, and may take additional evidence on the rate, because the post-verdict bargaining position differs from the hypothetical negotiation the jury considered. Courts also commonly award supplemental damages for infringing sales between the end of the period the jury's verdict covered and the entry of judgment. The plaintiff should ask for both in its proposed judgment, and the defendant should insist on an evidentiary record before any rate is set.

Enhanced damages and willfulness

Under 35 U.S.C. § 284, the court "may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed." Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S. 93 (2016), discarded the Federal Circuit's rigid two-part test and returned the question to the district court's discretion, reviewable for abuse of discretion, under a preponderance standard. Enhancement is reserved for egregious cases typified by willful misconduct, and culpability is measured against what the infringer knew at the time it acted. The jury usually decides willfulness; the judge then decides whether and how much to enhance, and many courts still organize that analysis around the factors in Read Corp. v. Portec, Inc., 970 F.2d 816 (Fed. Cir. 1992): deliberate copying, whether the infringer investigated the patent and formed a good-faith belief of invalidity or noninfringement, litigation conduct, the infringer's size and financial condition, the closeness of the case, the duration of the misconduct, remedial action, motivation for harm, and concealment.

The post-trial sequence follows from that division of labor. The defendant files a Rule 50(b) motion on willfulness, which it can do only if it moved under Rule 50(a) on willfulness specifically; a JMOL of no willfulness ends the enhancement question. The plaintiff files a motion for enhancement that marshals the Read factors with record citations. See Patent Damages: Reasonable Royalties, Lost Profits, Apportionment, and Enhancement.

Fees in exceptional cases

The Patent Act and the Lanham Act both authorize fees to the prevailing party "in exceptional cases." 35 U.S.C. § 285; 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a). An exceptional case is one that "stands out from others" in the substantive strength of a party's litigating position or the unreasonable manner in which the case was litigated, judged on the totality of the circumstances and proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Octane Fitness, LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., 572 U.S. 545 (2014). The ruling is reviewed for abuse of discretion. Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Management System, Inc., 572 U.S. 559 (2014). Most circuits now apply the Octane standard to Lanham Act fee claims as well; see Lanham Act Attorney's Fees Under 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a): A Practical Guide. Copyright fees under 17 U.S.C. § 505 are discretionary and evenhanded between plaintiffs and defendants, Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1994), with substantial weight on the objective reasonableness of the losing party's position but without making that factor controlling, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 579 U.S. 197 (2016); and statutory damages and fees are available only if the work was timely registered, 17 U.S.C. § 412.

A fee award against someone other than the named party raises a due process point that surfaces after patent verdicts more often than one would expect. In Nelson v. Adams USA, Inc., 529 U.S. 460 (2000), the district court amended a § 285 fee judgment to make the plaintiff company's president and sole shareholder personally liable, without first making him a party and giving him a chance to respond. The Court reversed. A post-trial motion to add a party to a fee judgment must give that party notice and an opportunity to contest liability.

Trademark profits and the court's power to adjust the award

The Lanham Act gives the judge an unusual post-verdict power. The plaintiff may recover, "subject to the principles of equity," the defendant's profits, its own damages, and costs; it need prove only the defendant's sales, and the defendant must prove its costs and deductions. In assessing damages, the court may enter judgment for any sum above the actual damages found, up to three times that amount, and if the profits recovery is "either inadequate or excessive," the court may enter judgment "for such sum as the court shall find to be just." Either adjustment "shall constitute compensation and not a penalty." 15 U.S.C. § 1117(a).

Two recent Supreme Court decisions shape the post-trial fight over profits. Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., 590 U.S. 212 (2020), held that willfulness is not a precondition to a profits award for a violation of § 1125(a), although the defendant's mental state remains a highly important consideration. And Dewberry Group, Inc. v. Dewberry Engineers Inc. (2025) held that "the defendant's profits" means the profits of the named defendant, not those of its separately incorporated affiliates, absent a basis such as veil piercing for disregarding corporate separateness. A verdict that sweeps in an affiliate's revenue is therefore vulnerable after the verdict, and the plaintiff who wants an affiliate's profits must name the affiliate or plead and prove a reason to disregard the corporate form. Because profits are an equitable remedy, many courts treat the jury's profits figure as advisory or decide profits themselves, which changes what the post-trial motion must argue. See Damages Apportionment in Trademark Cases: A Practical Guide.

Copyright statutory damages run the other way. The Seventh Amendment guarantees a jury determination of the amount of statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c), Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., 523 U.S. 340 (1998), so a judge who thinks a statutory award excessive must proceed by remittitur with the option of a new trial unless a legal limit is exceeded. Whether the Gore guideposts apply to statutory damages, or only the older and more deferential test of St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Co. v. Williams, 251 U.S. 63 (1919), remains unsettled. For the full set of remedies in each regime, see Copyright Damages and Remedies: Statutory Damages, Profits, Injunctions, and Fees and, for trade secret verdicts, Trade Secret Damages and Remedies: Unjust Enrichment, Reasonable Royalties, Injunctions, and Exemplary Awards.

Strategy for each side

For the party attacking the verdict

1. Decide what you actually want. Judgment, a new trial, a smaller number, or a cleaner appellate record are four different goals, and each points to a different motion, a different standard, and a different appellate posture. A defendant that believes it can win a retrial should emphasize the new trial grounds; a defendant that cannot afford a second trial should concentrate on JMOL and remittitur.
2. File the combined motion and argue every alternative fully. Rule 50(b) invites a joint request for a new trial. Ask for a conditional ruling under Rule 50(c), and include remittitur as the alternative to a new trial on damages.
3. Do not over-file. A brief with twenty-five grounds tells the judge that you do not know which three are good, and the court of appeals will draw the same inference. Lead with the issue that is both preserved and outcome-determinative, and drop the evidentiary rulings that were close calls.
4. Write for two audiences. The trial judge decides the motion, but the court of appeals reads it later as the definitive statement of what you preserved. Every argument should cite the transcript and the earlier objection.
5. Count the cost of delay. Post-judgment interest runs from entry of judgment, the bond premium runs from the day the bond issues, and judges notice motions filed only to postpone the inevitable. A motion that buys four months at a high interest rate and a 2 percent premium is not free.
6. Use the window to settle. The weeks between verdict and ruling are the most predictable settlement moment in the life of a case. Each side knows the number, both face real risk on the motions, and an appeal adds 12 to 18 months. High-low agreements, structured payments, and agreements that trade a waiver of appeal for a discount are all common.

For the party defending the verdict

1. Get the judgment entered. Ask for entry of judgment on a separate document under Rule 58(d) the day of the verdict, with a proposed form that includes prejudgment interest, costs, and any equitable relief. The 28-day clock does not start until the document is entered.
2. Attack preservation first. Lay the Rule 50(b) motion next to the Rule 50(a) transcript, ground by ground; compare the new trial grounds to the objections actually made; check the Rule 51 record for each instruction challenged. A large share of post-trial arguments fail at this step.
3. Defend the verdict on its own terms. Under Reeves, the question is whether any rational path to the verdict exists, so marshal the evidence for each element with pinpoint citations and identify the credibility determinations the jury necessarily made. Under Rule 59, emphasize the jury's superior position on credibility and the deference owed to its assessment of damages.
4. Argue harmlessness explicitly. Even if the court finds error, Rule 61 and § 2111 require prejudice, and the burden of showing it falls on the movant. Show why the result would have been the same.
5. Make the remittitur decision with eyes open. A plaintiff who accepts a remittitur cannot later appeal it, even under protest. Donovan v. Penn Shipping Co., 429 U.S. 648 (1977). A plaintiff who rejects it faces a new trial on damages and may challenge the remittitur order only after that trial. Before accepting, check how the circuit treats a plaintiff who accepted a remittitur when the defendant then appeals; the law on that posture is not uniform.
6. Protect collection. Insist on a full bond, oppose unsecured stays, and use the 30-day automatic stay to prepare post-judgment discovery. Calendar the 14-day fee deadline and ask for a Rule 58(e) order if one appeal is the goal.

Costs and practical realities

A combined post-trial motion in a complex intellectual property case commonly costs tens of thousands of dollars to prepare and oppose, and several hundred thousand when the issues include damages experts, willfulness, and equitable relief. Transcripts are the hidden expense; parties who did not order daily copy during trial must order expedited transcripts the day of the verdict. Briefing schedules are set by local rule or order, and decisions commonly arrive two to six months after the motion is filed, during which interest accrues and the bond premium is paid. The movant should budget for a hearing; the opponent should budget for a remittitur election on short notice.

Common mistakes

1. A generic Rule 50(a) motion. "Plaintiff has not proved its case" preserves nothing. State each element and the missing evidence.
2. No Rule 50(b) motion. After Unitherm, sufficiency is gone for good, both in the district court and on appeal.
3. Calendaring from the verdict, or relying on an extension. The clock runs from entry of judgment, and Rule 6(b)(2) forbids extensions. A stipulated briefing schedule cannot move the filing deadline.
4. Letting the jury go. An inconsistency between a general verdict and the answers to written questions must be raised before the jury is discharged.
5. Vague instruction objections. Rule 51(c) requires the objection to state distinctly the matter objected to and the grounds. "Plaintiff objects to Instruction 14" preserves little.
6. No offer of proof. Excluded evidence cannot support a new trial motion unless the record shows what it would have been. Fed. R. Evid. 103.
7. Treating the fee motion as tolling the appeal. It does not, unless the court enters a Rule 58(e) order. Budinich; Ray Haluch.
8. Forgetting the second notice of appeal. A notice filed before the post-trial ruling does not reach that ruling or an amended judgment.
9. Asking for additur. It is unconstitutional in federal court. The remedy for an inadequate award is a new trial on damages.
10. Collapsing the two punitive damages tracks. Argue common-law excessiveness and constitutional excessiveness separately, because they carry different standards of review and different remedies.
11. Starting the bond on day 29. Surety underwriting takes weeks, and execution can begin on day 31.
12. Unpleaded defenses. A defense not preserved in the answer and the pretrial order is not available after the verdict either. For the pleading side of that rule, see Answering a Federal Complaint: Denials, Affirmative Defenses, Counterclaims, and Judgment on the Pleadings.

Two worked examples

A $4.2 million trademark verdict the defendant wants reduced

Switchback Trail Co. sells hiking apparel under the registered mark SWITCHBACK. Pinecrest Outfitters, Inc. launched a line of boots called SWITCHBAK, sold through its own wholesale channel and through the retail stores and website of its sister company, Pinecrest Retail LLC, which was never named as a defendant. After a seven-day trial the jury answered a special verdict form: infringement under 15 U.S.C. § 1114 and § 1125(a), yes; willful, yes; actual damages (corrective advertising), $900,000; defendant's profits, $2,100,000 for Pinecrest Outfitters and $1,200,000 for Pinecrest Retail. Total: $4.2 million.

The split profits line exists because defense counsel insisted on it at the charge conference, over the plaintiff's objection that the companies were "one business." That single request is what makes the most valuable post-trial argument possible.

The calendar. Judgment is entered on a separate document on day 3. Everything runs from there:

The defendant's motion. Pinecrest's motion makes five arguments, in order of strength.

1. The affiliate's profits are legally unavailable. Under Dewberry, "the defendant's profits" are the named defendant's. The $1.2 million attributed to Pinecrest Retail should be struck as a matter of law. Because this reduction applies a legal limit rather than reweighing a fact, Hetzel does not require the court to offer a new trial.
2. The corrective advertising award is excessive. The only evidence of what a corrective campaign would cost came from Switchback's chief marketing officer, whose deposition testimony, played at trial, put the cost of a regional digital campaign at about $350,000; the $900,000 figure came from applying a percentage rule of thumb to Pinecrest's own advertising budget. Under the maximum recovery rule, the motion asks the court to remit to $350,000 or order a new trial on actual damages. (For the record mechanics of using that testimony, see Using Depositions at Trial and on Summary Judgment: Rule 32, Designations, Errata Sheets, and Impeachment.)
3. JMOL on actual damages. Pinecrest's Rule 50(a) motion argued, specifically, that there was no evidence that the SWITCHBACK mark's reputation suffered any harm requiring correction. That ground is preserved and is renewed, although it is weaker than the excessiveness argument because the jury heard some evidence of misdirected customer complaints.
4. A just-sum reduction of the remaining profits. Pinecrest asks the court to use its § 1117(a) power to reduce the $2.1 million, relying on its apportionment evidence that boot sales were driven by a waterproofing technology unrelated to the name.
5. JMOL of no willfulness. Willfulness is no longer a prerequisite to profits after Romag, but it drives fees, enhancement, and the equities of disgorgement, and Pinecrest preserved it under Rule 50(a).

The plaintiff's motions. Switchback moves for a permanent injunction (with the statutory presumption of irreparable harm), for enhancement of actual damages under § 1117(a), for fees as an exceptional case, and for prejudgment interest. Its opposition argues that Pinecrest Retail was the defendant's alter ego, but it never pleaded veil piercing and offered no evidence on it at trial, which is fatal to the argument.

The rulings. On day 120 the court strikes the $1.2 million as a matter of law; denies JMOL on actual damages but finds $900,000 excessive and remits to $350,000, giving Switchback 14 days to accept or take a new trial on actual damages; declines to reduce the $2.1 million because the apportionment evidence was not persuasive; denies JMOL on willfulness; denies enhancement because the profits award already compensates; grants an injunction; and awards fees in an amount to be fixed. Switchback accepts the remittitur. The amended judgment is $2.45 million plus fees and interest.

What happens next. Switchback cannot appeal the remittitur it accepted, Donovan, but it can cross-appeal the legal ruling on affiliate profits, which was imposed without a choice. Pinecrest must file a new notice of appeal within 30 days of the order disposing of the last motion; its earlier notice does not reach the amended judgment. The bond must cover $2.45 million plus a margin for interest and fees, and the injunction is not stayed unless the court grants a separate motion, which is unlikely because the cost of rebranding is self-inflicted. Interest becomes its own small dispute: whether § 1961 interest on the remitted award runs from the original judgment or the amended one, with Kaiser as the starting point.

Within a month of the rulings, the parties settle for $1.9 million and a twelve-month rebranding schedule, and Pinecrest dismisses its appeal. The post-trial motions took $2.3 million off the judgment's face value and set the settlement range. The verdict form request made at the charge conference was worth more than any argument in the brief.

A plaintiff who lost on a bad instruction

Quillfeather Paper Co. sued a competitor selling QUILL & FEATHER journals. At the charge conference, the court proposed an instruction stating that "to find a likelihood of confusion, you must find that consumers were actually confused." Quillfeather's counsel objected on the record, distinctly, citing the circuit's model instruction and the settled rule that actual confusion is one factor in the likelihood-of-confusion analysis, not a requirement. The court overruled the objection. During deliberations the jury sent a note asking whether a single misdirected customer email "counts as actual confusion." The court referred the jury back to the instructions. The special verdict form answered the first question, likelihood of confusion, "No," and the jury never reached damages.

Choosing the motion. JMOL is not realistic. Quillfeather bore the burden of proof, the evidence on most confusion factors was disputed, and a party with the burden almost never shows that no reasonable jury could find against it. The right vehicle is a Rule 59(a) motion for a new trial on the ground of instructional error, filed well within 28 days of judgment.

Making the case for prejudice. Error alone is not enough; Quillfeather must show the instruction probably affected the verdict. It has three good facts: the jury's note shows the jurors were focused on the erroneous requirement; the special verdict stopped at the very question the instruction governed; and defense counsel's closing argument emphasized that Quillfeather had "not one confused customer." That combination is the kind of record that defeats a harmlessness argument. A general verdict would have made the same showing much harder.

The defense response. The defendant argues that the charge as a whole listed every confusion factor correctly, that the challenged sentence was cured by the factor-by-factor instruction that followed, and that any error was harmless because the marks look and sound different and are sold in different channels. It also checks whether Quillfeather proposed similar language in its own requested instructions, which would raise invited error, and whether the objection was specific enough under Rule 51(c). Here the objection was clean.

The outcome, either way. If the court grants a new trial, the defendant cannot appeal immediately, Allied Chemical, and the case is retried with a correct instruction; if the defendant loses the retrial, it may challenge the new trial order on appeal from the final judgment. If the court denies the motion, Quillfeather appeals within 30 days of the denial, and the court of appeals reviews de novo whether the instruction correctly stated the law, then asks whether the error was harmless. Quillfeather's Rule 51 objection preserved the issue for appeal even without a new trial motion, but the motion gave the trial judge the chance to fix the error for the price of a second trial rather than an appeal plus a second trial. Had counsel not objected, the only path would have been plain error under Rule 51(d)(2), which is seldom found in civil cases. For the substantive confusion factors, see the Trademark Likelihood-of-Confusion Analysis: A Practical Checklist.

Frequently asked questions

If I did not move for judgment as a matter of law before the case went to the jury, can I still file a Rule 50(b) motion? No. The renewed motion can raise only grounds made in the pre-verdict motion. You can still ask for a new trial under Rule 59, but a sufficiency argument is gone in the district court and on appeal. Unitherm.

Can the judge give me more than 28 days? No. Rule 6(b)(2) forbids extending the deadlines for Rules 50(b), 52(b), 59(b), (d), and (e), and the one-year limit in Rule 60(c). A stipulation does not help, and a late motion does not restart the appeal clock even if the court decides it.

Does filing a post-trial motion stop the winner from collecting? Not by itself. Execution is stayed automatically for 30 days after entry of judgment; after that, only a court-approved bond or other security under Rule 62(b), or a court order, prevents collection.

What is the difference between a new trial and remittitur? A new trial sets the verdict aside and starts over on some or all issues. Remittitur is a conditional new trial: the court orders a new trial on damages unless the plaintiff agrees to a lower figure the court specifies. The plaintiff chooses, and a plaintiff who accepts cannot appeal the reduction.

Can a federal judge increase an inadequate award? No. Additur violates the Seventh Amendment in federal court. Dimick. The only remedy is a new trial on damages, although many state courts allow additur.

When is the notice of appeal due if post-trial motions are pending? Thirty days after the order disposing of the last timely motion listed in Appellate Rule 4(a)(4)(A). If you want to challenge that order or an amended judgment, file a new or amended notice within that period.

Does a motion for attorney's fees extend the time to appeal the merits? No, unless the court enters an order under Rule 58(e) before a notice of appeal becomes effective. Otherwise the merits clock runs from the judgment while the fee motion is pending.

How long do I have to seek relief if I discover after trial that the other side hid documents? A Rule 60(b)(3) motion must be made within a reasonable time and no more than a year after judgment. Fraud on the court under Rule 60(d)(3) has no fixed limit but requires misconduct that corrupts the judicial process itself, such as the fabricated article in Hazel-Atlas.

What happens if the jury's answers contradict each other? Raise it before the jury is discharged, while the court can still send the jurors back. After discharge, the remedy is usually a new trial, and some circuits treat the objection as forfeited.

Practical takeaways

• The post-trial motion is written during trial. Make specific Rule 50(a) motions, distinct Rule 51 objections, contemporaneous misconduct objections, and offers of proof.
• Calendar from the entry of judgment on a separate document, treat day 28 as a wall, and never rely on an extension.
• File the combined Rule 50(b) and Rule 59 motion, argue the alternatives fully, ask for conditional rulings, and include remittitur.
• Pick the motion by the standard of review it buys: de novo for JMOL, abuse of discretion for new trial and remittitur, de novo for constitutional punitive review.
• Keep the two punitive damages tracks separate, and remember that legal reductions do not require a new trial option while factual ones do.
• File a new or amended notice of appeal after the post-trial ruling.
• Start the bond process on verdict day, and calendar the 14-day fee deadline.
• In intellectual property cases, budget for the second half of the judgment: injunctions, ongoing royalties, enhancement, profits adjustments, and fees.
• Use the window between verdict and ruling to settle; it is the most predictable moment in the case.

This document is general information, not legal advice for any particular situation; the law changes, and the facts matter.

Related Documents

Related Articles

• Federal Appellate Practice: Preserving Error, Standards of Review, and Briefs That Win: what happens to the post-trial record on appeal.
• Interlocutory Appeals and Mandamus: Getting Appellate Review Before Final Judgment: why new trial orders usually wait for final judgment.
• Attorneys Fees and Costs: The American Rule and Its Many Exceptions: fee-shifting statutes, Rule 54(d), and § 1920.
• Collecting a Judgment: Discovery in Aid of Execution, Liens, Levies, and Garnishment: what the winner does when there is no stay.
• Proving Damages in Civil Litigation: Certainty, Causation, and the Numbers That Survive: the evidentiary record that decides remittitur.
• Federal Rule of Evidence 403 and Unfair Prejudice: A Practical Guide: the evidentiary rulings most often raised in new trial motions.
• Expert Witnesses After the 2023 Amendment to Rule 702: Daubert, Disclosure, and Cross-Examination: the expert challenges that become Weisgram arguments.
• Summary Judgment Under Rule 56: Winning and Surviving Before Trial: the pretrial motion whose arguments must be renewed under Rule 50.
• Answering a Federal Complaint: Denials, Affirmative Defenses, Counterclaims, and Judgment on the Pleadings: preserving defenses at the pleading stage.
• Using Depositions at Trial and on Summary Judgment: Rule 32, Designations, Errata Sheets, and Impeachment: building the trial record that post-trial motions cite.
• Trade Secret Damages and Remedies: Unjust Enrichment, Reasonable Royalties, Injunctions, and Exemplary Awards: post-verdict remedies in trade secret cases.
• Patent Damages: Reasonable Royalties, Lost Profits, Apportionment, and Enhancement: enhancement under § 284 and the damages record.

Related Guides

• Filing or Opposing Post-Trial Motions Under Rules 50, 59, and 60: A Practical Guide: the step-by-step procedure for both sides.
• Preparing and Opposing a Fee Petition: A Practical Guide: the 14-day fee motion and the lodestar.
• Seeking an Interlocutory Appeal: A Practical Guide: when review is available before final judgment.

Related Checklists

• Post-Trial Motion Checklist: A Practical Checklist: every deadline and preservation step in one list.
• Attorney Fee Petition and Bill of Costs Checklist: A Practical Checklist: costs under § 1920 and fees under Rule 54(d)(2).
• Appellate Record and Brief Checklist: A Practical Checklist: carrying the post-trial record into the appeal.

Related Toolkits

• Post-Trial Toolkit: Rule 50 Renewals, New Trial Briefs, and Remittitur Analyses: templates for the motions discussed here.
• Trial and Post-Trial Toolkit: From Pretrial Order to Judgment: the trial-stage preservation work that makes post-trial motions possible.
• Jury Trial Toolkit: Voir Dire, Openings, Exhibits, and Instructions: drafting instructions and verdict forms that hold up.
• Appellate Practice Toolkit: notices of appeal, records, and briefs.
• Judgment Enforcement and Collections Toolkit: execution, liens, and post-judgment discovery.
• Trademark Enforcement and Litigation Toolkit: From Watching to Verdict and Appeal: trademark remedies from complaint through appeal.