091185P.pdf   06/30/2010  Alice McCabe  v.  Michael Parker
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  09-1185
                          and No:  09-1847
   U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Cedar Rapids   
   [PUBLISHED] [Bye, Author, with Wollman and Murphy, Circuit Judges]
   Civil case - civil rights. Plaintiffs were able to adequately present the
   conflicting testimony regarding the place where they were arrested during
   a Cedar Rapids anti-war protest, and the district court did not abuse its
   discretion by denying their requests for permission to ask leading
   questions during their direct examination of the arresting officers; no
   abuse of discretion in denying plaintiffs permission to question the
   officers about a settlement; jury's answers to special interrogatories were
   correctly interpreted by the district court as showing that the jury found
   plaintiffs' arrests were supported by probable cause under Iowa law;
   because defendant Macaulay had probable cause for plaintiffs' arrest he
   could not be held liable for any damages from an unlawful search
   conducted by others as part of plaintiffs' booking process; district court
   did not abuse its discretion by determining that plaintiffs' case was a
   "garden variety" strip search case or by using a damage comparison
   approach in evaluating the size of the damage award; nor did the court
   abuse its discretion by finding a $750,000 damage award was excessive;
   however, the court erred in remitting the damage award to $75,000; when
   a court employs a damage comparison approach and thereafter identifies
   a range of reasonable jury awards in similar cases, the court is not at
   liberty to remit the award to the low range or even somewhere in the
   middle; the court's only choice is to remit the award to the maximum
   amount identified as within the reasonable range; the matter must be
   remanded to the district court for recalculation of the remittitur; on
   remand the court should consider the effect of inflation when comparing
   the awards from earlier cases, and it should make an award to each
   plaintiff; the plaintiffs should have the option of accepting the new
   remittitur or undertaking a third trial on the issue of damages from their
   unlawful strip and body cavity searches; the award of attorneys' fees must
   also be reversed for reconsideration in light of the ruling on remittitur.