If you can't see that being a hometown plaintiff gives one an advantage over an absentee defendant, then you simply don't understand the dynamics of jury trials. That's the entire justification for being able to get state claims into federal court under a diversity theory, but even that's a joke. The jury comes from the same pool of citizens and the judge almost always comes from a state court bench. So eliminating local bias by trying the case in federal court instead of state court is a farce.EEllis wrote:Nothing I'm seeing makes me think that JV had any preferential treatment or that his popularity affected him in any positive way. During this trial his celebrity works against him by raising the burden of proof and he still managed to convince 8 out of 10 and convince them that he was do considerable recompense. But even tho people haven't seen the evidence it must be the wrong verdict. Going by the response here it's a good thing the trial wasn't it Texas because I don't see how JV could have a fair hearing and that just saddens me. As to the comment you responded to my point was that in its entirety the award would probably be worth maybe a third of what this book has brought to the estate so far leaving the widow anything but poor regardless of the end result.Charles L. Cotton wrote:I don't know anything about the lawsuit, other than what has been in the media. Even if Chris' wife wasn't a named party, Ventura was going after her as she is the beneficiary of his estate. Whatever he takes from Chris' estate is something his widow will not receive.EEllis wrote:The idea that JV is going after a poor widow is pure fantasy.
On the subject of fantasy, any finding by a jury of unjust enrichment due to the inclusion of the Kyle/Ventura incident, if any, is pure fantasy. There's no way to provide reliable evidence as to how much more money was generated by the inclusion of that event in the book. If the case had been filed and tried in Texas, it's doubtful the jury would have even seen that question in the jury charge. We correctly don't allow recovery of speculative damages.
As I said before, I didn't see the evidence or hear the testimony, but I suspect the verdict was influenced by the fact that it was tried in Minnesota (Ventura country) and the defendant was not a favorite son. I may be wrong, but there must be some explanation for the jury award on purely speculative damages.
Chas.
I don't know where you are getting the 1/3 percentage for unjust enrichment, but regardless is unfounded. There simply is no way to get reliable evidence to prove that, but for the Ventura incident, the book would have generated only $X as opposed to $Y with the incident included. That's why Texas has a strong rule against speculative damages; we don't let juries award money damages on a hunch or junk science.
Chas.
