 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. Garrett8/28/1996
f enormous proportions. The conduct of the defendant, of all of these defendants, is of great seriousness. If it were a criminal case, some of them would be on trial for murder."
The trial judge sustained the objections to counsel's phrasing, and stated, "Let's not mention any criminal activity," but did not issue a curative instruction to the jury at that time. Hohman's counsel went on immediately to describe his decedent's death:
"The enormity of the injuries here is almost beyond description. The horrors of slow and painful wasting, suffocating, starving death. The worst features of what happened here are the way Mr. Hannon, Mr. Hohman, Mr. Garrett and Mr. Scruggs were tortured on the way to dying. It's worse than being shot, worse than being beaten to death. They suffered unmercifully from between six months to two years."
Minutes later, despite the trial court's instructions, the same counsel alluded once again to the criminality of the defendants:
"[The defendants' lawyers] use what they call the TLV defense, the threshold limit value. You know, if someone were to go to work every day, if someone were to go to work every day and poison the boss until the boss died, you know what they would call that. But if the asbestos company poisons a worker a little bit every day, they call it a threshold limit value."
He then accused the defendants of "deliberate, cold-blooded disregard for life."
Moreover, plaintiffs' counsel analogized the defendants to "villains," and further compared the defendants' recordkeeping to the recordkeeping of the Nazis during the Holocaust. They described the disease of mesothelioma dramatically, claiming that it "stalked" its victims, took them "hostage" and "robbed" them of life. Finally, one counsel stated that the defendants "stole" the lives of the plaintiffs.
The trial judge overruled most objections made to these comments by plaintiffs' counsel. He denied a motion for mistrial made several hours after one plaintiff's counsel's use of the term "murder," stating that there was
"no manifest necessity for granting a mistrial. The Court sustained the objection as soon as it was made. And I might parenthetically state that there was no request for a curative comment to the jury, which the Court would have made had one been made. And additionally, even if there was at that time a manifest necessity, counsel have waived that by letting it pass until now."
One of the defendants' counsel then requested an immediate curative instruction, a request which was joined by some but not all of the other defense counsel. The attorney who did not join in the request expressed concern that giving the curative instruction so long after the improper remark would "make matters worse," a concern which the trial judge apparently heeded as he made only a veiled reference to the improper remark:
"Members of the jury, there was an objection during Mr. Hoffman's opening argument, and I sustained that objection. Disregard the comments that were made by Mr. Hoffman at that time. We advise you that you should disregard those comments."
Finally, after closing arguments and just before the jury began its deliberations, the trial judge reiterated his curative instruction, saying to the jury, "Comments made analogizing this case to criminal cases are improper and must be totally disregarded by you in your deliberations."
OCF also argues that the prejudice to its case from the improper remarks of opposing counsel was compounded by other circumstances which occurred during the trial, rendering a fair trial impossible.
Mrs. Hohman, decedent Will
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Maryland Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|