Thread of legal hubbub

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Postby dodint » Tue Feb 15, 2022 3:10 pm

The judge and jury were not deciding the same thing.
The judge's dismissal is his determination that even if everything was taken in favor of Palin what she was alleging does not rise to defamation as a matter of law. The jury was deciding whether the facts alleged were enough for defamation. Unfortunately for Palin, neither the judge (administrator of the law) or the jury (finder of fact) felt there was enough there to meet that high legal threshold.

Had the judge dismissed the case and not brought back the jury the case would have gone on appeal with the error in dispute being his discretion. Given he allowed the jury to fully adjudicate the case now the appeals court will have both the judge's dismissal and the jury's result to consider when Palin alleges that the trial court committed an error.

That said, I'm not sure I have seen this before. Normally the jury would announce a verdict, and the losing side would motion for a Judgement Not Withstanding the Verdict (JNOV) where the judge would then set aside the verdict and issue his dismissal. I'm not as savvy as I could be at civil procedure so I can't venture to guess why he would do it in the order that he did. Maybe Shyster knows.

MiMH, this is the same kind of thing I was talking about with Flores. Anyone can file a lawsuit and start litigation, but if it is meritless it's a monumental waste of everyone's time. I don't know enough about this case to say why it got past Summary Judgement (if NYT even motioned for one) but was ultimately dismissed. Often lawsuits die early because the parties can be asked to prove early-on that they have enough for trial.

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Postby dodint » Tue Feb 15, 2022 3:12 pm

how does that even work? why have a jury if the judge can make a ruling themselves?
In a jury trial, the courts would very much rather have it decided by a jury. But a judge also has the duty to avoid a complete miscarriage of justice if the allegations do not actually violate a law or if it is clear the jury is willfully ruling against the facts and law.

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Postby dodint » Tue Feb 15, 2022 3:17 pm

That said, I'm not sure I have seen this before. Normally the jury would announce a verdict, and the losing side would motion for a Judgement Not Withstanding the Verdict (JNOV) where the judge would then set aside the verdict and issue his dismissal. I'm not as savvy as I could be at civil procedure so I can't venture to guess why he would do it in the order that he did. Maybe Shyster knows.
I looked into this and it turns out the NYT motioned for the dismissal while the jury was deliberating. I always thought you had to do it at the conclusion of the defendant's case, or directly after the verdict. I guess you can do it any time.
His decision came in response to a motion by The Times asking the court to rule in its favor even if the jury reached a different outcome
So, he was compelled to make a ruling either way. It wasn't something he came up with on his own. He could have just not made a ruling, but then NYT would have appealed it as an error (had they lost).

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Postby Shyster » Tue Feb 15, 2022 3:32 pm

Not sure about how the dismiss-the-case-but-leave-the-jury-deliberating thing works; I've never heard of that before. It might be a New York thing. It definitely seems unusual.

There are options for taking a case away from the jury, usually referred to as a "directed verdict" or a "nonsuit." It's typically a matter of course for the defense to make such a motion before a case goes to the jury, the vast majority of which are denied. The argument there is that the plaintiff's case failed to prove an essential element of the cause of action such that no jury verdict is necessary. For example, say it's a suit for breach of contract, but during trial the plaintiff never introduces any contract into evidence. You can't have a breach of contract without a contract, so the defense in that case would argue that there's no need to send anything to the jury because there is no evidence at all as to a fundamental element of the cause of action.

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Postby Tomas » Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:37 pm

Going back to the

"Unbeknownst to them, during deliberations, Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that Palin's attorneys did not prove a key element of their case, and that he would set aside the jury's verdict should it have found for Palin."

How much do jurors know / don't know when they are a part of the jury? Don't they watch TV? Check internet? Talk to their families? In other words, how is it possible in 2022 to make sure that such a material piece of information stays hidden to so many people?

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Postby Shyster » Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:05 pm

Jurors are ordered to not talk about the case and to avoid any outside information about the case. Whether they comply is another question, but if the court learns that a juror has been doing their "own research," that would be grounds to dismiss the juror, and it may be grounds to overturn a verdict if it's learned after the fact.

For very high-profile cases, the court may order that the jurors are sequestered for the duration of the trial, which means they're staying in hotel rooms and and denied access to television and internet.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:56 pm

what is the contemporary use case for requiring witnesses at the submission/signing of legal documentation?

my friend was telling me about when she got married. They just went to the courthouse to sign the paperwork (no wedding) and they were informed they needed two witnesses so they found random people at the courthouse to attest to witnessing it

it feels like a holdover from a 1400s doctrine when legal documents wouldn’t be upheld or something

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Postby Tomas » Thu Feb 17, 2022 12:11 am

Jurors are ordered to not talk about the case and to avoid any outside information about the case. Whether they comply is another question, but if the court learns that a juror has been doing their "own research," that would be grounds to dismiss the juror, and it may be grounds to overturn a verdict if it's learned after the fact.

For very high-profile cases, the court may order that the jurors are sequestered for the duration of the trial, which means they're staying in hotel rooms and and denied access to television and internet.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jurors-sarah ... 17599.html

There is no ducking way the jurors were unaffected by those notifications... :)

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Postby dodint » Thu Feb 17, 2022 12:14 am

When I saw that the jurors were receiving push notifications for a barely noteworthy trial that most of the world would care nothing about it indicated to me that they had already been searching out news about the trial on their own.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:07 pm

didn't want to much up the NFL thread but the Watson thing is interesting to me legally. He's being sued in civil court by 20 or so women and looks like he's not going to be indicted on criminal charges. Obviously I'm shooting from the hip here, but I'm guessing there isn't any evidence towards his wrongdoing, at least in the eyes of the grand jury, beyond the testimonies of the women

I guess my question is at what point testimonies of accusers are strong enough to overcome a lack of evidence? would it ever be enough without something hard like a smoking gun or a motive? what if a hundred women accused him? or a thousand?

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Postby dodint » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:09 pm

Circumstantial evidence like witness testimony can be enough to get an indictment or a conviction. Absolutely.

True crime podcasts would be out of business if that were not true.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:11 pm

Circumstantial evidence like witness testimony can be enough to get an indictment or a conviction. Absolutely.

True crime podcasts would be out of business if that were not true.
so then why didn't Watson get indicted? were the accusers' stories that bad?

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Postby dodint » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:13 pm

Juries are basically sentient magic 8-balls.

Maybe they didn't want to cancel him if the defense, unopposed, couldn't produce any direct evidence. Or maybe they were football fans. Who knows.

Curious to see if the civil cases whither away.

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Postby MalkinIsMyHomeboy » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:14 pm

does the lack of indictment help him in the civil courts?

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Postby dodint » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:18 pm

Good question. I am not sure. The question is usually asked the other way, prior bad acts.

If Shyster doesn't reply I will check. I am on my phone and can not dig too deep.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:55 pm

I'm no rules-of-evidence guru, but I don't think the lack of indictment would be relevant. A lack of indictment is not really probative of the person not having done the alleged acts. As dodint said, there are many reasons that a grand jury could have declined to indict.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Mar 24, 2022 9:53 pm

This is the second time a judge has struck down Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g) as violating the First Amendment. Basicallty, the woke scolds that run the ABA have inserted a "speech code" into the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct in the form of Rule 8.4(g), Pennsylvania has now tried twice to put variants of that model rule into the PA Rules of Professional Conduct. I applaud this decision and the lawyers who sued to block the rule.



The free-speech problems with the proposed Rule 8.4(g):


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Postby dodint » Tue Mar 29, 2022 11:54 am

My law school somehow got worse and slid into the 'Rankings Not Published' category of USNWR. There used to be four law schools in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The 2nd and 3rd biggest ones merged, and I went to that school. Both of the prior schools had published ranks. So my school took the best of two ranked schools and somehow came out with something worse. Now they're not only the third lowest law school in Minneapolis-St. Paul, they're not even ranked nationally anymore.

The staggering thing is they actually were legitimate pioneers in distance learning, being the first hybrid program to get ABA approval (others have come along since) so they should have been ahead of the curve when COVID hit and pushed everyone remote. Instead, they went backwards.

In local news, Duquense Law fell 10 spots.

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Postby Tomas » Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:35 am

My law school somehow got worse and slid into the 'Rankings Not Published' category of USNWR. There used to be four law schools in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The 2nd and 3rd biggest ones merged, and I went to that school. Both of the prior schools had published ranks. So my school took the best of two ranked schools and somehow came out with something worse. Now they're not only the third lowest law school in Minneapolis-St. Paul, they're not even ranked nationally anymore.

The staggering thing is they actually were legitimate pioneers in distance learning, being the first hybrid program to get ABA approval (others have come along since) so they should have been ahead of the curve when COVID hit and pushed everyone remote. Instead, they went backwards.

In local news, Duquense Law fell 10 spots.
Not sure if you saw the 2023 ranking, but MH does have a ranking there. Granted, it's the "long tie for the last ranked place" (147-190) kind of number, but (at least in business) US News gives it to schools that still have some pulse...

Plus, I bet that they are quite happy about their #37 in part-time law...

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Postby dodint » Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:37 am

Yeah, Ranking Not Published. Going from being ranked to having an unpublished rank is my issue. The backslide more than the absolute position.

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Postby Tomas » Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:46 am

Yeah, Ranking Not Published. Going from being ranked to having an unpublished rank is my issue. The backslide more than the absolute position.
I don't know about law that much, but in business (where there are literally hundreds of schools), US News has 3 categories:
1. "real ranking" (the actual number, ties are among at most 4-5 schools)
2. "has a pulse" (still ranking, but something like that 147-190)
3. truly unranked (either crappy schools, or schools that decided not to cooperate with US News - sometimes because they were caught cheating when providing the necessary stats to US News)

On US News website, MH is not "unranked", but it indeed has the "pulse" rank. Plus, if you weren't there full time, then "I graduated from a Top 40 program in the US" it should be!!

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Postby dodint » Wed Mar 30, 2022 10:56 am

They like to find niche things to pride themselves on. I think when I was there it was one of the top three programs for Dispute Resolution. Yay?

I know I'm nitpicking but if they put half the effort into bettering the school as they did promoting the fact that they appointed a gay dean of students they might not have backslid so far. They're ranked in the top 7 in social justice points, though.

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Postby NTP66 » Tue Apr 12, 2022 8:55 am

Out of curiosity, anyone know how much you'd generally spend on having a trust created, along with a will drawn up? Trying to get my parents to finally do this, and was going to have my mom enroll in the legal plan through work, but the new plan (LegalEASE) has absolute **** reviews everywhere.

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Postby dodint » Tue Apr 12, 2022 9:08 am

I enrolled in a legal insurance plan when I was a defense contractor. Looks great on paper but it was like pulling teeth to get a lawyer to stay on the phone once you mentioned it.

Not sure about the cost of the trust. For a will and healthcare directive, $300 per person is a good price. That's what a lawyer friend charged my parents and grandmother, with a friend discount.

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Postby NTP66 » Tue Apr 12, 2022 9:13 am

I think this is necessary, so if it came in under $500, I think they'd just do it. I had mine done by a lawyer after using my own company's legal plan, which was the Hyatt Legal Plan. That was worth every penny, as I had the trust and will created for under $125 total.

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