Civil Procedure
Perjury

It was error to dismiss a case as a sanction for perjury, when the statements at issue were merely inconsistencies that fail to rise to perjury.

"There is a marked difference between a witness who knowingly lies about a material matter and a witness who is impeached with a prior inconsistent account of a sudden and chaotic event that happened years ago. The former is almost always perjury; the latter may be the product of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory. See Griffin, 310 F.3d at 1024; Payne, 102 F.3d at 292. Inconsistent testimony may amount to perjury if the plaintiffs' intent was to give false testimony on a material matter, but the inconsistencies here do not themselves support an inference of intent to testify falsely. There is no other evidence to support a finding that these plaintiffs deliberately fabricated their testimony.

The district court seized on the fact that Montaño, Ruiz, Perales, and David Mendez 'met and discussed the events of September 14, 1997 on more than ten occasions prior to the trial.' But when Ruiz was asked at trial whether the purpose of those meetings was 'to get your story straight about what happened,' he denied it, setting up a routine credibility question for the jury. The district court cited no other evidence to support its conclusion that the foregoing inconsistent passages of testimony constituted perjury; our own review of the record has disclosed none. The district court's perjury findings were clearly erroneous, and therefore its dismissal sanction was an abuse of discretion."

Reversed in part, and Affirmed in part.

06-2148 Montano v. City of Chicago

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Der-Yeghiayan, J., Sykes, J.

Full Text