A blog about the work lawyers do to win commercial disputes by Will Newman
Filtered by Category: Litigation
RICO claims fail a lot because they attract a lot of plaintiffs but require such technical expertise that most lawyers do a poor job of asserting them. Also they are particularly appealing as a last resort for claims that could not succeed in a more straightforward claim.
Read MoreI think that the best lawyers read court decisions constantly to know what the latest interpretations of the law are. And I confirm that any lawyer that submits a citation to a case in court should actually read the case to understand it and the applicable law.
Read MoreA defendant may oppose the proceeding by claiming that her rights to the property are not undermined by the creditor’s judgment. She may do this by arguing that she is distinct from the judgment debtor and the property really belongs to her, without any obligation to the debtor.
Read MoreSince judge’s are often very reluctant to interact with any party without hearing from the other side, judges are often reluctant to grant relief unless there is a real emergency. As a result, judges will often hand write on the proposed order their edits or cut out entire sections, limiting the order to what they are comfortable doing having only heard from one side.
Read MoreWhen people appeal, it is usually because they think the lower court made a mistake or used bad reasoning. But fixing mistakes or correcting reasoning is not the only thing that an appeals court may look for. And so petitions for leave often make other arguments besides a need to change the result in the petitioner’s own case. Instead, petitioners may argue that taking the case is important for reasons broader than the individual interests of the parties to the case.
Read MoreAfter a bench trial concludes, each side will have a copy of all of the exhibits that came into evidence and a transcript of all of the testimony. Instead of relying on the judge to comb through all of that evidence to decide what the facts are, the parties will do that themselves and then present the judge with “proposed findings of fact.”
Read MoreEvery organization should have a formal data incident response plan, but most can be simplified to one overarching element: call your cybersecurity counsel immediately. This puts your best player on the field in the first minute of the game. In doing so, you can establish an attorney-client privileged communication channel at the outset. Your outside counsel will serve as your advisor and concierge, coordinating the incident response.
Read MoreAmicus briefs are still formal documents, not just a comment in a website’s comments section. This means that, even though a brief may nominally come from a person or organization, it is really written by a lawyer and in the style of a legal argument. The brief must explain who the “amicus” (the “friend of the court” who is offering the brief) is, why they have an interest in the case, and then set forth the amicus’s argument.
Read MoreI sometimes work with private investigators who call and meet with people to learn more about the subjects of an investigation. And sometimes I do this work myself, picking up the phone or writing emails, contacting people who may have helpful information.
Read MoreA trial may drag on for awhile, and so the closing statement gives a lawyer the chance to get the fact finder to recall important evidence from the beginning of the trial. And to assign some weight to the evidence: a witness who spoke for three days may not be more important than the one who spoke for an hour, and so the closing statement lets the lawyer spend more time on the important details and convey to others the relative importance of evidence.
Read MoreIn some situations, the law will impose “strict liability” on a defendant. This means that, if a plaintiff is injured, it does not matter whose fault it is. This is meant to give manufacturers an incentive to make their products so safe that the risk of any injury, even one they could claim is not their fault, is low.
Read MoreA few years ago, I wrote posts about technology and the law and about how litigation is depicted on television. As kind of a mash-up of these posts, I asked Google Bard to write a blog post about litigation on television. And, to my surprise, the post was actually pretty insightful. So I’m sharing that post and my commentary on it and on legal insights written by AI.
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