Early America adopted English common law and a long history of cherished rights, including the right to trial by jury – which dates back to 1215. In that year, Pope Innocent III issued an order validating a person’s right to a trial by peers. That same year, at Runnymede in England, King John was forced on a battlefield to sign Magna Carta – the ancient pact he made with English Barons, including a stipulation to man’s right to “the lawful judgment of his peers”. These are the events that first set rule of law above kings.

A kid gunned down a health insurance CEO as he walked a busy Manhattan sidewalk into a shareholder’s conference. In America, there’s a certain passion surrounding guns and the Second Amendment. The Surgeon General issued an advisory about an epidemic of gun violence and deaths resulting therefrom. U.S. Surgeon General Issues Advisory on the Public Health Crisis of Firearm Violence in the United States

Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and adolescents. HHS Report on Firearm Violence in America

At the same time, Americans have lost respect for our justice system in record numbers according to Gallup. Trust in court system at record low: Gallup

There are many reasons for both of these trends. They aren’t all related. But here is what I propose. We need a movement similar to the #2A movement to promote jury trials, a right guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment to our Constitution. And we need to invest time and money into improving our court systems and their rules so they can demonstrate their importance to our system of governance.

Self-defense and a well-regulated militia should be a last resort. There wouldn’t be a need for violence if we took our jury trial rights as seriously as our gun rights. Project 7A is designed to start that process.

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Given recent events, I am going to work on that.

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When I entered the classroom each new school year, I became responsible for teaching a group of strangers who may not have wanted to be there, about a subject that they may not have wanted to learn and were largely ill-equipped to understand. This easily could be considered the job description of a trial attorney.

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“The misconduct of Appellant’s counsel has resulted in unnecessary expense to his client and to Appellee, a waste of judicial resources, and inconvenience to the jurors who took four days out of their lives listening to evidence and rendering a verdict, given that the case must be retried before a new jury,” the panel said Friday. “Such conduct cannot be condoned.”

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… one juror had gone home, looked up the warnings on his EpiPen, and brought that information to deliberations. The trial court first granted, then on reconsideration denied, the motion, prompting the appeal.

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Law students who would traditionally experience only a few courtroom scenarios over a semester have begun working with programs that can provide an entire array of courtroom curveballs, thanks to large language model artificial intelligence technology.

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Based on real-life experiences, I have suggestions for “curveball” fact patterns to throw at these kids. Here’s one for starters:

Say you’re trying a case against your old boss and his client. It is a two-week-long medical malpractice case involving a birth injury and a brain-damaged baby with moderate to severe cerebral palsy. The defense attorney for the hospital – your old boss – is scheduled in another medical malpractice trial at the same time in a different court. In response to his plea for a continuance (to which you object), the Judge indicates she plans to force a trial of your client’s case each morning for four weeks while his other case is tried for four weeks in the afternoon. Go, young people. What do you do?

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A Florida state court judge denied Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital’s bid for a new trial in the case of Maya Kowalski, the person at the center of the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” after finding no misconduct from the jury foreperson following an interview Wednesday.

During a hearing, Sarasota County Circuit Court Judge Hunter W. Carroll denied Johns Hopkins’ bid after interviewing jury foreperson Paul Lengyel, identified as Juror #1, on whether he violated court instructions and had inappropriate communications with his wife during the trial.

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Here is a Florida appellate court decision that may help with that.

During jury selection, Okaloosa County Circuit Court Judge William F. Stone refused to excuse for cause one of the jurors who Seadler flagged as biased. This meant Seadler was forced to use one of his three peremptory challenges to toss the problematic juror, the justices’ opinion said. Seadler was ultimately forced to accept a different juror he didn’t want and would have removed if he only had that challenge, the opinion said.

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Lee’s family successfully argued that inexperienced doctors on call at the hospital waited three hours before removing the clot from a major artery, leading to brain damage, according to Lee’s attorneys with Gair Gair Conason Rubinowitz Bloom Hershenhorn Steigman & Mackauf, who said the verdict is the largest award ever in a medical malpractice case in Westchester County.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1779270?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-12-21&read_main=1&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=0?copied=1

In many cases, the front-line providers use inexperienced providers as a shield to hold themselves at a remove from patient care. Frequently, the experienced providers will blame the inexperienced providers with not sharing important information. This often results in substandard or negligent care and treatment.

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A Florida jury tacked on $50 million in punitive damages to a roughly $211 million award to the family of Maya Kowalski, the child at the center of the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital for mistreating Maya to the point that her mother took her own life.

Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1739675?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-11-13&read_main=1&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=0?copied=1

I have been following this case and blogged about it

here (“A Difficult Case”), 

here  (“I Was Afraid This Would Happen”), and    

here (Juror Questions).

Medical malpractice cases are difficult on their own. When you add novel issues regarding damages and liability, they can become overwhelming. In addition, this case was tried in a jurisdiction considered by most trial lawyer to be relatively conservative.

I tackled similar issues in a neighboring county. You can read the results of that successful appeal

here (Estate of Thomas versus Lee Memorial Health System).

I have nothing but complete admiration for Maya’s family and their legal team for this brilliant result and wish the best for them during the inevitable appeal.

The post A major victory for Maya’s family, their lawyers, and patients everywhere. I cannot overstate how impressive this work is under difficult circumstances. appeared first on The Thompson Law Firm.