Post by Neo on Jun 4, 2007 19:36:59 GMT -5
According to a June 11, 2003 Wall Street Journal piece by Jim Copland, Dickie Scruggs, “one of the nation’s foremost plaintiffs’ lawyers,” described picking the best location for trial this way at a 2002 conference: “[W]hat I call the ‘magic jurisdiction’ … [is] where the judiciary is elected with verdict money. The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected. … They’ve got large populations of voters who are in on the deal. … And so, it’s a political force in their jurisdiction, and it’s almost impossible to get a fair trial if you’re a defendant in some of these places. … Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn’t matter what the evidence or the law is.”
He said this at the "Asbestos for Lunch, Panel Discussion" at the Prudential Securities Financial Research and Regulatory Conference, (May 9, 2002), in Industry Commentary (Prudential Securities, Inc., N.Y., New York) June 11, 2002, at 5.
Same quote taken from another source on the internet:
Dickie Scruggs: "What I call the "magic jurisdiction," [is] where the judiciary is elected with verdict money. The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected; they're State Court judges; they're popul[ists]. They've got large populations of voters who are in on the deal, they're getting their [piece] in many cases. And so, it's a political force in their jurisdiction, and it's almost impossible to get a fair trial if you're a defendant in some of these places. The plaintiff lawyer walks in there and writes the number on the blackboard, and the first juror meets the last one coming out the door with that amount of money . . . . These cases are not won in the courtroom. They're won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial. Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn't matter what the evidence or law is." - Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2003,
page A16 col. 15
He said this at the "Asbestos for Lunch, Panel Discussion" at the Prudential Securities Financial Research and Regulatory Conference, (May 9, 2002), in Industry Commentary (Prudential Securities, Inc., N.Y., New York) June 11, 2002, at 5.
Same quote taken from another source on the internet:
Dickie Scruggs: "What I call the "magic jurisdiction," [is] where the judiciary is elected with verdict money. The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected; they're State Court judges; they're popul[ists]. They've got large populations of voters who are in on the deal, they're getting their [piece] in many cases. And so, it's a political force in their jurisdiction, and it's almost impossible to get a fair trial if you're a defendant in some of these places. The plaintiff lawyer walks in there and writes the number on the blackboard, and the first juror meets the last one coming out the door with that amount of money . . . . These cases are not won in the courtroom. They're won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial. Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn't matter what the evidence or law is." - Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2003,
page A16 col. 15
