Homefed Village III Master, LLC v. Otay Landfill, Inc.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA HOMEFED VILLAGE III MASTER, Case No.: 20-cv-0784-AGS-JLB

LLC,

ORDER ON MOTIONS TO

Plaintiff, BIFURCATE (ECF 165, 166, 168) v. 6 OTAY LANDFILL, INC., et al., 7 Defendants. 8 Plaintiff’s amended complaint includes one purely equitable claim, which is normally tried to a judge alone, and two state-law causes of action, which require a jury trial. Defendants move to bifurcate these claims and try the equitable claim—or at least an element of it—first in a separate bench trial. The key question is whether this proposal comports with the Seventh Amendment. The Seventh Amendment “preserves the right to trial by jury of all legal claims,” while no such right “exists for equitable claims.” Danjaq LLC v. Sony Corp., 263 F.3d 942, 962 (9th Cir. 2001); see also Teutscher v. Woodson, 835 F.3d 936, 943 (9th Cir. 2016) (according Seventh Amendment jury-trial right to “state law claims” when “the right in question and the remedies sought” are “legal in nature”). And when the…