That is, the jury ran away from the plaintiff as fast as they could. Dish Network sues News Corp.'s NDS Unit for over a billion bucks, contending an NDS employee hacked into its network, stole code, posted the code on the internets so everybody could watch satellite tv for free. Jury finds for plaintiff. Awards $1,500 dollars.
Hat tip to California Punitive Damages.
The Los Angeles Times reports that last week a San Diego jury awarded $3.6 million to a Marine captain serving in Iraq against his homeowners' insurer, USAA. The jury found that the company, which specializes in insuring military personnel, cheated him and defrauded him in connection with water damage to his Oceanside home. The plaintiff testified early in the trial, then was deployed to Iraq before the jury awarded $84,000 to fix his water damage, $50,000 for emotional distress and $3.5 million in punitive damages. The trial judge would not allow the jury to be told he was deploying to Iraq, and he testified in civilian clothes.
In these rarified times and in this State, it's not that unusual a verdict. But here's the unusual part: The San Antonio Express's blog, MySA.com (in Texas, not California) received some 90 posts on the verdict, ranging from scathingly anti-plaintiff (suggesting he should have stayed home from Iraq and paid attention to his water damage) to similarly anti-USAA. USAA posted a carefully measured response at the same blog. As is customary after disappointing verdicts, it defends the company's position, expresses its disappointment, and bravely assures readers that the Court of Appeal will straighten out this misunderstanding. But USAA then writes:
First and foremost, USAA respects and honors Capt. Colombero's military service. We stand on our record of excellent service to the U.S. Military and their families for more than 85 years, as evidenced by our member satisfaction, claims satisfaction and customer retention rates — the highest in the insurance industry. We disagree with any statements that criticize our military members or suggest that they should not answer their call to duty.
There is probably no jury verdict more likely to strike fear in the hearts of board members and officers everywhere than a securities trial verdict. The amounts at stake are nearly always mind-boggling, the cases involve concepts not exactly familiar to your average juror, and the defendant corporations and officers -- well, they don't usually start the race with a leg up. Perhaps that is why these cases so rarely go to trial.
But the case against JDS Uniphase just did. The fiber optics manufacturer was sued by the State of Connecticut, which claimed that investors lost $18 billion because JDS failed to timely disclose that demand for its products was falling. And after two days of deliberations in Federal Court in Oakland, the jury returned with a defense verdict.
Update: WSJ.com law blog reports on the verdict, and describes a securities fraud class-action trial as "rare as a pygmy marmoset."
Verdict Search California (subs. req.) reports on the September, 2007 verdict for UniRamTechnology, Inc. against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). UniRam shared some proprietary semiconductor design information with TSMC under an NDA, while they explored having TSMC manufacture the semiconductors. TSMC decided it would indeed manufacture the semiconductors -- for one of UniRam's competitors.
Not good said the jury. That will be $30.5 million, thank you very much. Ouch.
And as often happens, "Defense counsel did not respond to the [VerdictSearch] reporter's phone calls."
DBCP is a nematocide (i.e., it's used to kill nematodes), used in connection with pineapple and banana farming, and discontinued in the United States beginning in the late 1970's based on allegations that the chemical reduced male sperm counts. It's been the subject of litigation in California for nearly thirty years. And, there's been much litigation by field workers against Dole Food Co. and Dow Chemical Co. in Central America, none of which has resulted in any money changing hands.
The first California trial by Central American field workers against the two companies resulted in a mixed verdict yesterday. The cases of twelve plaintiffs were tried together. Six plaintiffs won, and six lost. The total awarded to the six winning plaintiffs was $3.2 million, not a particularly dramatic verdict for six plaintiffs in a toxic injury case (and probably not much of a pay day for their lawyers, given what it takes to prepare and try a case such as this). The jury is reported to have assigned 60 - 80% fault to Dole and 20 - 40% to Dow, depending on the plaintiff.
Reactions by the two companies were interesting. Dole was happy to win six of the cases, and lauded the jury in that respect. On the other hand,
". . . .the six verdicts against Dole are flat wrong and the result of junk science, raw emotional appeals and false testimony. These six men were not injured by DBCP or Dole, and it is unjust for them to be awarded money from us. We are appealing to set the record straight.”
Furthermore:
"Dole will not be intimidated by ugly accusations, fraudulent claims, junk science or threats from U.S. trial lawyers, and is prepared to fully litigate each and every case of workers over the last 30 years. . . ."
Dow, who is now only in this for a small share, was apparently a bit more sanguine. The AP quoted Gus Felice, it's chief trial counsel, as follows:
"Dow Chemical Co. is very pleased that this jury, after four months of listening to the evidence, concluded that six of the 12 plaintiffs were entitled to no recovery whatsoever..."
The case was scheduled to go back to the jury today to determine whether the defendants acted with malice, whether punitive damages should be awarded, and if so, how much and against whom.
Initial MSM reporting on the verdict is here, here and here. Dow's press release is here.
In my post last week on big verdicts, I was remiss in not commenting on one in particular: the $6,000 compensatory / $47,400,000 punitive award in Nortel Networks v. Platinum Networks in United States District Court in San Diego. $47.4M / $6K is a 7900 to 1 ratio, which seems to be just a bit beyond the due process parameters of State Farm Insurance v. Campbell.
David Sugden at Call, Jensen and Ferrell tried the case for Nortel. Call Jensen's press release on the verdict indicates the trial court was to consider throwing out the punitive damage award on July 14, but the case apparently went away in a confidential settlement. Educated guess: the settlement amount was closer to $6,000 than it was to $47 million.
A supplement to today's Recorder (subscription required) provides information about the top 15 jury verdicts in California in 2006. Seven out of the fifteen are either business vs. business or business vs. public entity, rather than individual or group tort claims. Four are IP cases, two are breach of contract cases (including a $22 million verdict in favor of the defendant in Hub v. City of Compton, which I blogged about here). One is a large environmental / product liability case by the City of Modesto involving dry cleaning chemicals. Rounding out the balance are three employment cases, four personal injury or wrongful death cases and an insurance fraud case against a life insurer selling a long-term annuity to an elderly man with Alzheimer's disease.
Trial courts reduced seven of the verdicts and took one of them away outright. It looks as though the trial courts upheld three verdicts, and the others either settled or we can't tell what happened. A chart summarizing all of the fifteen cases appears below, and also here.
In 2000, Leonard and Leslie Whiteley recovered a verdict of $1.7 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris in San Francisco Superior Court. Ms. Whitely (whose smoking-related injuries were the basis of the case) died in the summer of 2000. In 2004, the Court of Appeal took the verdict away, holding that the California immunity in effect for tobacco companies between 1988 and 1998 meant that no evidence of conduct during that ten year period was admissible to prove fraud by the tobacco companies. Whiteley v. Philip Morris Inc. (2004) 117 Cal.App.4th 635.
The case has just been retried. A new jury has awarded Mr. Whitely about $2.5 million in compensatory damages and found that R.J. Reynolds acted with malice. The jury will shortly be considering whether to award punitive damages against Reynolds, and if so, how much. Further report here at Law.com.
Just about my last post before I took off for 12 days holiday in China was a brief note on Alcatel-Lucent's $1.52 verdict against Microsoft in San Diego. As I slog through the blog posts from while I was gone, it seems like just about everybody has slammed this outcome as an excellent example of the patent law being broken, with critics on the right (Overlawyered, February 25) and the left (Kevin Drumm at the Washington Monthly, February 23). Drumm and Overlawyered's Walter Olson both quote the Washington Post's Rob Pegaroro, who notes that the verdict has something for every critic of patent abuse:
* "Submarine" patents, invoked years after a contested invention has hit the market? Check
* Claiming ownership of a media format most people use all the time? Check
* A plaintiff that's failed to commercialize its own alleged invention? Check
* Extortionate royalty demands? Check
One of my plans when I started this blog was to report on interesting verdicts. Well, this is pretty interesting: The jury came back today in Alcatel-Lucent's MP3 code patent case against Microsoft in federal court in San Diego, finding for Alcatel-Lucent and awarding $1.52 billion in damages against Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal's law blog has it here.
Wow. How'd you like to be the one to call Microsoft on the phone with that news?
