Local firm Henness & Haight landed themselves a big verdict last Thursday.
According to our tipster, an eight-day trial ended in an eight-person jury returning a verdict of $3.51 million (it's $1.4 million for those of you slow at math) in favor of Las Vegas resident Roger Johnson, and against JP Flexibles, a New Jersey corporation as a result of injuries Johnson suffered from a defective high pressure paint hose.
It all started with a man and a dream ... a dream of painting houses:
Plaintiff, a professional house painter, was using a flexible hose manufactured by Defendant with a paint sprayer. The hose ruptured, injecting paint into Plaintiff's right hand. As a result of the accident, Plaintiff underwent six surgeries, including having his right index finger amputated.
Yikes! That one must be hard to explain at parties. Don't worry Roger, they'll forget all about that missing finger when you're "makin' it rain" at the club.
Judge Susan Johnson presided over the case, boring details are available here.
(Thanks, Tipster)
Anyone know the defense shop that got rung up?
ReplyDeleteGood for H&H. Everybody bags on "ambulance chasers" until they need one.
ReplyDeletePoll question: if you hear of a firm referred to as H&H do you think of:
ReplyDeleteA) Holland and Hart;
B) Howard and Howard; or
C) Henness and Haight
My vote is for A - but the likelihood of confusion leads me to believe that none should go by the aforementioned moniker.
Congratulations to H&H!
ReplyDeleteIt's so passe to make fun of "ambulance chasers." The plaintiffs bar has its share of ethically challenged individuals, but that hardly rises to the institutional corruption that defines the defense bar.
Remember, whatever his personal weaknesses, the Plaintiffs Attorney acts as an agent of Justice; however imperfect in person, his goals are for greater glory of humanity and universal justice.
The Insurance Defense Attorney, however, is the agent of Satan whose very goal is the destruction of justice and the advancement of evil; thus, even the most personally wonderful fellow rolling along in life with smiles and charm is, at heart, corrupt and debased.
I love triple expresso in the morning.
@9:28
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, it is referenced in direct response to a post about C) Henness and Haight, right???
9:35
ReplyDeleteSeriously, lay off the espresso (or, expresso as you call it).
People are being disingenuous when they act like plaintiffs attorneys are all scum bags. The truth is, understandably, in the middle somewhere. There are good plaintiffs attorneys and shady plaintiff attorneys. There are good defense attorneys and shady defense attorneys. If you think either side has a monopoly on shadiness, then you are fooling yourself.
The fact is, our system requires both types. This is what keeps balance in the system. If there were no defense lawyers then there would likely be countless frivolous claims. On the flip side, if there were no plaintiff attorneys, corporations would rarely take responsibility for their actions.
Calling Attorney Howard, Attorney Fine, Attorney Howard...
ReplyDeleteword verification: "flogings" -- what should be administered to people who write "expresso."
Just like there are very few hero-doctors, there are very few hero-lawyers. It's a profession and like most businesses it is profit driven.
ReplyDeleteIf it's not profit, it's glory that drives lawyers, like prosecution or civil rights.
Maybe you should ask someone at H&H about the fact that Plaintiff will be missing out on $2M of that award. Can anyone say "high/low"? I suspect the "tipster" left that part out.
ReplyDelete10:54
ReplyDeleteWhat's a "floging?"
What punishment should be administered on people who harp on others for their spelling and do so with misspellings?
@11:50
ReplyDeleteSo tell me, are you proud of yourself for convincing the carrier to agree to a $1.4 million high, thus saving the carrier in excess of $2 million? Or, are you saddened that your butt got handed to you and the same carrier will probably never use your services again? Just curious.
12:24, Epic Fail.
ReplyDeleteYou can't be that stupid, can you? The word verification is what you type to allow the comment to post.
The space for typing the word verification is next to the words "word verification."
That means "flogings" was what needed to be typed for the comment to post. Like "expresso," it was close to, but not, the correct spelling. Sheesh, you idiot.
Also, "expresso" is unlikely to be a typo-based spelling error and more likely to be an ignorance error, i.e. the person in question meant to type "expresso" because s/he didn't know any better.
Arraign them all, Lafayette!
Also, does anyone have any experience with Habbas & Bognar?
Anon at 12:34
ReplyDeleteDefense firms don't choose the facts, nor their clients very often. The fact that they saved their clients $2 mil is a pretty good deal. The real question is what did each defendant pay?
I represented a client who had to pay out $10 mil to the Plaintiffs but collected $11 Mil from the Third Parties. Yep the damages, plus the cost of defense. Our carrier was thrilled at this huge "verdict"
11:50 AM
ReplyDeleteWhich H&H are you talking about?
9:28 AM
@12:34
ReplyDeleteYou're asking the wrong person for answers to those questions; I didn't try the case nor, for that matter, did I know the exact amount of the "high" or "low," only that the "high" was about $2M less than the award. So, congratulations on your win and enjoy explaining to your client the fact that he gave up $2.1M. If the agreement precluded separate recovery for fees/costs, then I guess he gave that away too. If that's the case, great advice!
Looks like Lincoln Gustavson, Atkin Winner and Barron & Pruitt were all on the hook at some point for different defendants. Not sure who went all the way to trial (and too lazy to look it up).
ReplyDeleteWill someone please explain what "high/low" means and what happened to the $2 million? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteA high/low is a stipulation entered into by the parties that the Plaintiff would only receive a high of 1.5 million regardless of what the verdit was and a low of some other figure guaranteed to the Plaintiff regardless of the verdict.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about this case, but I have done high/lows before. It may be a good deal depending on insurance coverage. What good does a four million dollar verdict do you, if the judgment is tied up on appeals or bankruptcy court. I would rather take the 2 million now than wait for five years on appeal, and then risk everything if the company goes out of business.
ReplyDeleteYou can't second-guess these high/low deals too much, especially since nobody here (to my knowledge at least) really knows all the facts or what sort of defenses were raised. What if there had been a defense verdict? The plaintiff would still have received money, and the lawyer would be a hero.
ReplyDeleteFrom what i heard around the courthouse, only 6 of hte 8 jurors found for this Johnson guy and the defense presented some pretty strong evidence against him showing he caused his own injuries. It seems like this is one case where the jury ignored teh evidence in order to give this guy money... Sympathy may have prevailed and justice not served.
ReplyDeletewhy do you think a hi/lo agreement was made? probably because the plaintiff thought his case was not as strong as the defendants. If the defense had a strong case, then the verdict is just WRONG.
ReplyDeletethis jury must have had their head up their butts to award 3.5 million for a missing finger... especially if the guy got injured because of his own stupidity. I'm real curious about the evidence presented by the defendant...
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments.
ReplyDelete"Only" six out of eight? Sorry my friend, that is what is required. I think a more appropriate comment could be "only" two jurors found Defendants' argument compelling.
As for the plaintiff entering a high/low agreement because "he didn't think his case was as strong as the defendants," I guess you could say the the contrary is true with the defendants-they only entered the high/low because they didn't believe their case was as strong as plaintiff's, right? The fact is, both parties know that juries are unpredictable, and entered a high/low to hedge their bets-a common maneuver.
As for 5:32's comment about the jury having their heads up their butts, you are making an awful lot of assumptions with very little information, and your bias is showing.
Any good defense attorney worth their salt has lost multi-milllion dollar verdicts. There are many variables to go into trial. It is not a simple Trial Adv Class Assignment. 99% of those decisions do not involve the insured or the attorney. It is the insurance carriers that need to change how they address a 'loss'. Good attorneys often get crappy cases and crappy attorneys often get good cases...just look at the results of this case and make your own judgment.
ReplyDeleteWTF is wrong with "expresso" as opposed to the more pansy "espresso." This ain't venice, girls. I harbor the same contempt for gay white guys who order "yeeeeros" instead of "gyros." F'you, f'ing f'er; this is America, I pronounce and spell the furrin' words any way I want.
ReplyDeleteInstead of bad mouthing attorneys, whose jobs are just simply to represent their clients within ethical boundaries, why not discuss the jury system or just how the pool of jurors in Nevada is filled with people who ignore their own stupidy!!! I watched portions of the trial and was quite surprised by the verdict. A great deal of evidence was presented by the defense that destroyed the plaintiff's credibility. The plaintiff presented a video of what a day in his life is like, a video which was clearly intended to show that he cannot function. The defense had a surveillance video that contradicted a great deal of plaintiff's video. The jury clearly ignored that in awarding $3.5 million. More importantly, the jurors ignored evidence that cntradicted defense evidence showing that the incident did not occur as Plaintiff testified.
ReplyDeletefor all those discussing the "high/low," rather than berating plaintiff's or defendant's attorneys, why don't you people wonder what kind of information the attorneys had that you didn't. If one of the commenters is correct that there are at least two hold-out jurors, then I imagine that there's a damn good reason why plaintiff's attorney would advise in favor of a "high" . . . because it gives their client a guaranteed "low" in the event the jurors found against plaintiff. I say kudos to the defense attorney that got the high/low... saved not only his insurer but perhaps also his client, if the insurance policy was not enough to cover the verdict
ReplyDeleteThis case just shows me that smart people need to stop getting out of jury duty. We need jurors who can actually listen to the evidence, set aside their biases and not make up some illogical reason why they would disregard a surveillance video that shows Plaintiff was quite capable of doing the things he claimed he is unable to do. The jurors disregarded evidence showing plaintiff's lack of credibility with a simple wave of the hand, by (ir)rationalizing that the evidence of lies came after the incident. Of course, Plaintiff's lies came after the incident, because that is when Plaintiff developed a motivation to lie. His lost finger was his lottery ticket, and the jurors just handed this guy his prize-- $3.5 mil for being a good actor. Congratulations Nevada for proving once again that this is the Wild Wild West.
ReplyDeleteAll this tells me is that only about 20% of you ever try cases. The verdict is good or bad relative to what it could have been and the prediction, and all the judgment in the world is worthless if you can't collect.
ReplyDeleteBig verdict does not always equal good plaintiff lawyer and bad defense lawyer, any more than small verdict equals the opposite. There are too many other variables for any of us to judge.
It's always amazing to see what at judge/jury keys into when they hear a case. Since the attorneys know the cases so well, we often overlook what we consider a minor point.
ReplyDeleteAnyone have any success with the private juries that Porter and Maupin are offering?
Despite the many unsupported, silly and inane blatherings from the unsophistated contributors, I give kudos to the comments made on 10/21 at 10:06p, 10:43p, 10:50p, and 10/22's 8:56a, and 9:57a. Yes, there are many factors and variables which influence a verdict, including, unfortuneately, biased jurors who have preconceived notions and prejudices about issues involved in the lawsuit. Jurors will not always be honest during jury selection as to their biases and prejudices and, in this case, appear to have been smitten with sympathy and/or entitlement mentality merely because of the injuries.
ReplyDeleteI have done more than 30 criminal and civil jury trials and have tried personal injury cases for both plaintiffs and defendants. I can readily say that this result may have been the most unfair decision i have seen because the evidence overwhelmingly proved that Plaintiff's credibility was impeached by both witnesses and circumstantial evidence. The evidence, including an independent, non-interested witness, also proved that plaintiff caused his own injuries - giving rise to the assumption of risk defense for JP Flexibles. You see, i can say this because i am the defense attorney who tried this case, and, having first hand knowledge of all the evidence presented, this verdict was simply absurd. Welcome to the wild, wild west...where the plaintiff got over on you jurors out there. Sometimes the legal system fails simply because some jurors have their own agenda.
@3:50
ReplyDeleteFor all your talk about bias you fail to address your own bias as the attorney who just got whooped. Sure there are some jurors who are bias, and who hide that bias during VD, but it swings both ways-there are many individuals who have bought into the "jackpot verdict" hype. The statistics show that juries far more often than not find in favor of defendants. But when a plaintiff happens to get a large verdict, then defense attorneys start blathering about runaway juries and the wild west-give me a break.
to @8:57 pm
ReplyDeleteI'm Plaintiff's attorney and would generally be the last one to believe Nevada has runaway juries... but what I will say is this... we have a lot of stupid jurors in town. I've seen it personally and have heard from those who participated in juries. As for your comment about the defense attorney that tried this case, I watched portions of the trial and was quite impressed with what I thought was a slam dunk case for the Plaintiff. The defense convinced two jurors that Plaintiff was full of crap is worthy, particularly when sympathy does favor the Plaintiff. I say to you, 8:57, try a case from a defense side before you start talking crap. As for runaway juries, have you not paid attention to the multimillion dollar judgmets recently awarded to Egglet and others. One case in mind dealt with a woman who slipped and fell at a restaurant. She was awarded $5.9 mil, reduced only by her comparative negligence of 50%. Should that woman have deserved it when the evidence seemed to indicate that she was drunk at the time of the incident and that she may have a drug problem? As a plaintiff's attorney, I can tell you we do take cases where our client will be sympathetic and have horrendous injuries, even where liability is questionable in hopes that the jury will be biased.
Dont get me wrong. I love the jury system. I certainly use it to my advantage. But the jury system is not fair because it is not about the evidence when there are stupid jurors who do not pay attention to the evidence or will disregard it to reach the result that they want, that makes them feel good.
Unfortunately, it appears that is what happened in this case. The plaintiff was a sympathetic witness, and I think the defense did a great job in dealing with this witness. For those of you people that have not tried a case (i.e., 8:57 pm), the defense has a very difficult job in not looking like an ogre when cross-examining an injured and sympathetic witness. The jury ignored the numerous inconsistencies in this guy's testimony, the number of other evidence contradicting plaintiff's version of how it occurred, and a surveillance video that this guy lied about his limitations. The jury ignored it because they liked the guy and he lost a finger. It's not the jurors money after all. As a plaintiff's attorney (aka ambulance chaser who gets people money for their pain), I wish for a jury that they had in this case.
9:48:
ReplyDelete8:57 here. I'm sure you are a great trial lawyer, but you could improve your skills even more if you would stop making ill-informed assumptions (i.e. that I have never tried a case before), based on little or no information.
You're all too predictable. You did exactly what I said people do. They point to the large verdicts obtained from a plaintiff (as you predictably did by pointing out Eglet's verdicts) as evidence that juries are going wild. You failed to mention the countless defense verdicts that are handed down in between those seven figure verdicts. Again, statistics overwhelmingly indicate that juries favor defendants. Just because there are some large verdicts does not mean we are in the "wild west."
I find it interesting that in the minds of many people juries are completely competent to determine whether an individual lives, dies or has his liberty taken away in a criminal case, but when it comes to awarding an individual money, they are all of the sudden incompetent idiots.
I'm not saying that there are not bias jurors, or that sometimes jurors ignore evidence in pursuant of their own personal agenda. All I ask is that people be balanced and admit that it happens on both sides. For example, I've seen a trial where the defendant admitted that he was at fault, and the jury still found that he did nothing wrong! At least be objective in your criticism and admit that there are issues on both sides. I obviously stuck a cord with you, which makes me believe that you take this very personal and seem to have a tough time being objective.
By the way, do you have a proposed solution or a better alternative to juries? If so, I would love to hear it (this is not sarcasm).
For those feeling bad for the plaintiff or rejoicing for the insurance company about the $2M that got away, there were substantial settlement(s) paid by other defendant(s) prior to trial. This is a client and his lawyer's dream-to play with house money. Under the circumstances, I say hooray for high/lows.
ReplyDeleteI have personally defended very poor cases taken on by H&H. (not blowing my own horn - the cases SUCKED.) Glad they finally got one that paid. They are decent guys.
ReplyDeleteYou know - just because you represent the injured party in a personal injury case does not mean you are an ambulance chaser. I would much rather represent an actual person who needs my help and law degree than a company who has decided that they don't want to perform on a contract so they want to find an out or an insurance company who doesn't want to cover their insured.
ReplyDeleteThe people in these cases are like you and your family - they could actually be your family or your friends someday.
This blog is definitely written by the defense bar.