Rule 49.Special Verdict; General Verdict and Questions

Rule 49(a) gives the trial judge a tool for complicated cases: instead of one overall verdict, the jury can return a special verdict, meaning a set of written findings on each disputed fact. The judge can build that set of questions in whatever form works best — short categorical questions, forms covering the possible findings the pleadings and evidence support, or another method the judge considers appropriate — and must give the jury the instructions it needs to answer them. If a fact issue never makes it onto that list, a party gives up the right to a jury finding on it unless the party asks, before the jury retires, to have it submitted. Without that request, the judge can make the finding directly, and if the judge makes none at all, the missing finding is treated as consistent with whatever judgment follows from the special verdict.

Rule 49(b) covers a hybrid approach: the jury returns an ordinary general verdict for one side or the other, plus written answers to specific questions the judge has also submitted. When the general verdict and the written answers line up, the judge approves judgment on both together. Trouble arises when the answers agree with each other but not with the general verdict — the judge then has three options: enter judgment on the answers despite what the general verdict said, send the jury back to reconsider both, or order a new trial.

If the written answers disagree with each other, and one or more of them also clashes with the general verdict, the judge cannot enter judgment at all. The only paths forward are sending the jury back for further deliberation or ordering a new trial. Read together with Rule 51's instruction procedures and the jury-trial rules in Rules 38 and 39, Rule 49 gives a judge a way to pin down exactly what a jury decided on discrete factual points, which matters most in cases where a single up-or-down verdict would blur several separate questions into one.