A motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict in California, known as JNOV, asks the trial court to throw out a jury’s verdict and enter judgment for the losing side because the evidence was legally insufficient to support what the jury decided. The governing statute is California Code of Civil Procedure Section 629, and the standard is deliberately severe: the court grants JNOV only when no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict on the evidence presented, viewed in the light most favorable to the party that won at trial.1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629 Courts use it sparingly because it overrides the jury’s factfinding role entirely.
The Standard the Judge Applies
Section 629 does not spell out a detailed test. It ties JNOV to the directed verdict standard, authorizing the court to grant the motion “whenever a motion for a directed verdict for the aggrieved party should have been granted had a previous motion been made.”1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629 California courts read that to mean the verdict cannot stand if no substantial evidence supports it when the record is viewed as favorably as possible toward the verdict winner.
The judge asks one question. Could any reasonable jury, weighing the evidence as favorably as possible toward the winner, have reached this result? If yes, the motion fails. The court does not reweigh evidence, judge witness credibility, or substitute its own view of the facts. It looks only at whether the evidence crosses the minimum threshold needed to support the verdict.
One feature sets California apart from federal practice and some other states. Section 629 does not require the losing party to have moved for a directed verdict during trial. The statute treats the directed verdict question as hypothetical (“had a previous motion been made”), so a party can pursue JNOV after the verdict even if they never asked the judge to take the case from the jury mid-trial.1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629
Filing Deadlines You Cannot Miss
JNOV follows the same filing schedule as a motion for new trial. Under Section 659, the motion must be filed either before entry of judgment or within 15 days after the clerk serves notice of entry of judgment, or within 15 days after any party serves written notice of entry, whichever happens first. If no one serves notice, an outer limit of 180 days after entry of judgment applies.2California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 659 Miss these dates and the right to JNOV is gone.
The briefing schedule is tight. Under Section 659a, the moving party has 10 days after filing to serve and file supporting papers. The opposing party then has 10 days after service to oppose. The movant gets a final 5 days for a reply. The judge can extend these windows by up to 10 additional days for good cause.3California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 659a
The court’s power to rule has a hard expiration. If a JNOV motion is not decided within 60 days after the clerk mails notice of entry of judgment, or within 60 days after a party serves notice of entry, the motion is automatically denied by operation of law. No extension is possible. This jurisdictional cutoff is the same one that governs new trial motions, and it catches lawyers off guard more often than it should.1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629
Pair It With a Motion for New Trial
Most parties who lose at trial file both motions. They serve different purposes and have different standards, though they share the same filing window.
JNOV asks the court to throw out the verdict and enter judgment the other way because the evidence was legally insufficient. If granted, the case is over at the trial level and the former loser now has a judgment. A new trial motion asks the court to start over, and the grounds under Section 657 are broader: procedural irregularity, juror misconduct, surprise or accident, newly discovered evidence, excessive or inadequate damages, insufficient evidence or a verdict against law, and legal errors at trial that were objected to.
The practical difference matters. A judge can grant a new trial when the evidence was technically sufficient but the verdict seems unjust overall. JNOV demands a finding that the evidence was legally insufficient, a much narrower inquiry. Filing only one of the two motions leaves leverage on the table.
Filing both also unlocks a procedural safeguard built into Section 629. The court must rule on both motions at the same time and cannot decide the JNOV until the deadline for filing a new trial motion has passed. When the court grants JNOV, it can simultaneously grant a conditional new trial. That conditional order sits dormant unless an appellate court later reverses the JNOV, at which point the new trial order activates automatically. Without that mechanism, a party who wins JNOV at the trial level and then loses on appeal would be stuck with the original verdict and never get a second trial. The conditional new trial only works if both motions are on the table.1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629
What Happens on Appeal
An order denying JNOV is directly appealable. Section 904.1 lists it among the appealable post-trial orders, so the losing party does not have to wait for some separate final judgment to raise the issue in the Court of Appeal.4California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 904.1
Section 629(c) goes further. When the trial court denies both a JNOV motion and a new trial motion, the appellate court can order JNOV entered on appeal if it decides the motion should have been granted. The reviewing court applies the same standard the trial court should have applied, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the party that won the verdict.1California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure – Section 629
When the trial court grants JNOV and the verdict winner appeals, the appellate court likewise reviews the evidence independently. If it finds substantial evidence did support the jury’s verdict, it reverses the JNOV and reinstates the original result. Whether the case then gets retried or the verdict simply stands depends on whether the trial court entered a conditional new trial order.
What Makes a JNOV Motion Actually Work
These motions succeed rarely, and that reality should shape every decision about whether and how to file one. The threshold is intentionally high because the motion asks a single judge to discard a jury’s collective judgment. Winning requires identifying specific, provable gaps in the evidence, not general dissatisfaction with how the jury weighed competing testimony.
The strongest motions focus on elements the opposing party carried the burden to prove and simply did not. If a plaintiff needed to establish causation and offered nothing beyond speculation, that is a concrete argument a court can evaluate. Motions that ask the judge to prefer one expert over another, or to find one witness more credible than another, almost always fail. That kind of factfinding belongs to the jury, and the JNOV standard is built to protect it.
Timing pressure is real. The 10-day briefing windows under Section 659a leave little room for drafting a thorough motion from scratch after the verdict comes in. Experienced trial attorneys outline their post-trial motions during trial itself, flagging weak points in the opposing party’s evidence as it is introduced. Waiting until the verdict to start thinking about JNOV is how deadlines get missed and arguments get underdeveloped.