Episode description

Welcome to Supreme Court Opinions. In this episode, you’ll hear the Court’s opinion in Dupree v Younger.

In this case, the court considered this issue: To preserve the issue for appellate review, must a party reassert in a post-trial motion a purely legal issue rejected at summary judgment?

The case was decided on May 25, 2023.

The Supreme Court held that a post-trial motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 is not required to preserve for appellate review a purely legal issue resolved at summary judgment. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the unanimous opinion of the Court.

In Ortiz v Jordan, the Court held that a party whose sufficiency-of-the evidence challenge was rejected at the summary judgment stage must reassert the claim in a post-trial motion to preserve it for appeal. That decision was based on the reasoning that the factual record developed at trial supersedes the record existing at the time of summary judgment.

When the motion for summary judgment is based on a purely legal question—rather than on the factual record—no subsequent proceedings in the trial court supersede conclusions of law. Thus, when a pure question of law is resolved in an order denying summary judgment, the party need not reassert the claim in a post-trial motion to preserve it on appeal.

The Court did not decide whether the issue Dupree raised on appeal is purely legal, so it remanded the case for the Fourth Circuit to answer that question.

The opinion is presented here in its entirety, but with citations omitted. If you appreciate this episode, please subscribe. Thank you.