Acevedo-Garcia V. Monroig

This complex political discrimination case was filed by eighty-two plaintiffs terminated from career employment positions with the municipality of Adjuntas in Puerto Rico. The district court severed the plaintiffs into four groups -- three groups of twenty and one group of twenty-two -- and the claims of the first twenty plaintiffs are now before us on defendants' appeal from a substantial verdict for plaintiffs. Although this case raises many familiar issues, it also presents some unusual questions arising from the court's initial severance of the plaintiffs, and its later decision to apply non-mutual offensive collateral estoppel to the three remaining pieces of the severed litigation. We vacate the court's collateral estoppel order, and affirm in all other respects.