Stephanie Mencimer

From Tort “Reform” to Jury Nullification?

Cross-posted from The Tortellini

Someone once told me that one of the most visible results of the tort reform movement on American culture was that it had given people permission to be mean. A perfect example of this seems to have come from an insurance company lawyer in Las Vegas recently. Earlier this month, the Nevada Supreme Court voted to discipline a defense lawyer who regularly represented Allstate for disparaging plaintiffs and the legal system during closing arguments, arguing that the lawyer was aiming for jury nullification.

Lawyer Philip Emerson used almost identical closing arguments in four different cases. Here are some excerpts:

“People must take responsibility for their lives and not blame others for challenges and setbacks. People must stop wasting taxpayers’ money and jurors’ valuable time on cases like this.”

And this:

This is a case where the plaintiffs are trying get something for nothing … it’s cases like this that make people skeptical and distrustful of lawyers and their clients who bring these types of lawsuits. It’s a big factor as to why our profession is not as honorable in the eyes of the public as it once was. But the only way that people and their chiropractors will stop bringing these cases is if juries start saying no, enough is enough. Our legal process is meant to justly compensate and make one whole, not to make them rich.

In another case, Emerson asked jurors to imagine their own child getting injured, then said, “[i]s that an opportunity, does that mean you just go out and sue-negligence? It’s an accident.” The Nevada court ordered Emerson to pay all the attorney’s costs in four cases in which he engaged in “attorney misconduct” and ordered new trials in two of the cases.

I’m not so surprised by the sorts of things Emerson was saying in court (though it is pretty funny to see how often he recycled his identical closing arguments. How much do you supposed he billed Allstate for that?). What I find sad about it is that he clearly thought that his arguments would resonate well with the jury. But I guess he knows juries a lot better than I do, as he won three out of the four cases at issue.

Posted at 6:35 PM, Jan 12, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)