Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Well, my previous prediction was right where it counted, wrong in the timing: today a Houston civil jury in the assault case filed by a flight attendant against Victoria Osteen returned a defense verdict (nailed that part) after several hours of deliberation (missed that one). Edit: MSNBC reporting that the jury reached its verdict after “brief deliberations.”
Some media are reporting that the jury found Osteen “not guilty.” Although that probably conveys an accurate description of the result in the minds of many, this wasn’t a criminal matter. Rather, the plaintiff sued the defendant for assault (and money damages) and the jury was likely asked a yes/no question on whether the assault occurred. Civil juries decide liability, criminal juries decide guilt/innocence. Law Dork will be quiet now.
Tags: jury trials, Osteen
Posted in Jury, Rule of Law, tort | Comments Off
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
…let me apologize for this.
As if we needed more bad publicity, now a flight attendant has sued Joel Osteen’s wife over an alleged assault which occurred when Mrs. Osteen got upset when something wasn’t quite right in First Class.
According to court documents, the plaintiff is suing Osteen for causing “anxiety and hemorrhoids” because of the assault, as well as a loss of faith. I can’t wait to see how the plaintiff attempts to prove causation. I read somewhere that the plaintiff is seeking punitive damages of 10% of Osteen’s net worth, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of a gazillion dollars. Good luck with that.
Prediction: Osteen’s lawyer Rusty Hardin will beat this plaintiff like a rented mule. IF it gets to the jury, they will deliberate for a few minutes just to be polite and then return a defense verdict. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to start thinking about how we handle this case in our next voir dires.
Tags: jury trials, Osteen
Posted in Jury, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
Excellent piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times describing how arbitration is supplanting jury trials. Here’s an excerpt:
“Tort reform is a game of bait-and-switch in which ordinary citizens have been snookered by carefully orchestrated and relentless propaganda into seeing a phantom boogeyman in the much-reviled “trial lawyer” who brings “frivolous lawsuits” to “runaway juries” that render “out of control verdicts” in “judicial hellholes,” making insurance rates and the costs of all goods and services go up. Well, none of those expenses have gone down, have they? All the while, the real target was the justice system set up by our founders to protect the average citizen, and now it is in serious peril.”
Well said, Ms. Garrity.
Tags: Jury, jury trials, lawyer, tort
Posted in lawyer | Comments Off
