Jury orders Charter to pay $7 billion in technician’s murder of Texas customer

People hate their cable companies. A focus group could have told the defense that before trial. My bet is the defense rode their assumption that the company couldn’t be held responsible for the employee’s criminal conduct all the way to real trouble. It’s a good bet that they misread the jurors all the way through […]

Failed Episiotomy Bench Verdict

A federal judge has awarded $5 million to a New Hampshire woman who suffered years of pain and scarring after a botched surgery at an Army hospital to repair an injury she received in childbirth. The link to the NH bench verdict is here,

The Embedded Appeal

And sometimes the critical need to focus on persuasion can understandably affect a trial lawyer’s focus on sometimes mundane legal issues. Behind every good trial strategy lies a series of arguments, objections and rulings that could – theoretically – set a case up for appeal regardless of the verdict. I know this better than most, […]

In Defense of Jury Trials

The Jury consequently invests the people … with the direction of society.             Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Yesterday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) used a lot of his time during the Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination hearing to champion the Constitutionally protected 7th Amendment right to a jury trial. He argued that SCOTUS, the Chamber of […]

Physician Liability for #OUD (Arguments in Ruan v. US)

Convicted doctors argued their appeal in the United States Supreme Court the other day. At issue are jury instructions given in their case and the standard imposed by the trial court. For nearly 90 minutes on Tuesday, the court grappled with the question of whether good faith is a defense for doctors criminally prosecuted for […]

Wakey, Wakey: Morning Cuppa 2022

The Maxwell jury came back before the holiday, convicting in the sex trafficking case on all but one count – looks [ike multiple decades of prison time. The Holmes / Theranos jury is apparently deadlocked on at least some counts, according to notes to the Judge, As we like to say here, juries are not […]

Verdicts

One of my favorite films about trial lawyering is The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman and directed by Sidney Lumet.  David Mamet adapted the screenplay from a 1980 novel by Barry Reed. Newman plays Frank Galvin, a lawyer holding on tightly to a medical malpractice claim near the end of his career. He is strung […]