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Full-Text Articles in Civil Procedure
Trial By Preview, Bert I. Huang
Trial By Preview, Bert I. Huang
Faculty Scholarship
It has been an obsession of modern civil procedure to design ways to reveal more before trial about what will happen during trial. Litigants today, as a matter of course, are made to preview the evidence they will use. This practice is celebrated because standard theory says it should induce the parties to settle; why incur the expenses of trial, if everyone knows what will happen? Rarely noted, however, is one complication: The impact of previewing the evidence is intertwined with how well the parties know their future audience-that is, the judge or the jury who will be the finder …
Party's Over: Admissibility Of Post-Trial Juror Testimony Should Depend On The Nature Of The Conduct, Justin Gillett
Party's Over: Admissibility Of Post-Trial Juror Testimony Should Depend On The Nature Of The Conduct, Justin Gillett
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
What do you call a weeklong period in which you and a handful of acquaintances drink alcohol every day at lunch, sleep though the afternoons, smoke marijuana and ingest a couple lines of cocaine on occasion? You call it the time when a jury convicted Anthony Tanner and William Conover of conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit various acts of mail fraud. Under a current rule of evidence, which precludes juror testimony to impeach a verdict except on extraneous prejudicial information, juror intoxication is not an external influence about which jurors may testify. A new test for the …
The Jury And Scientific Evidence, Richard O. Lempert
The Jury And Scientific Evidence, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
Read court decisions and commentaries from 100, or evenfive years ago, and you will find that experts and scientific evidence were causing problems then just as they are causing problems now. I do not think that Daubert, Kumho Tire, or any change in a rule of evidence will keep expert scientific testimony from being a difficult area for the legal system. Yet we must still ask: "What are the best terms on which to deal with scientific experts, and how can weimprove the system?"
Make-Believe: The Rules Excluding Evidence Of Character And Liability Insurance (Symposium: Truth And Its Rivals: Evidence Reform And The Goals Of Evidence Law), Samuel R. Gross
Articles
Article IV of the Federal Rules of Evidence includes several rules that prohibit the use of specified types of information as evidence of particular propositions. Subsequent remedial measures are inadmissible to prove negligence (but admissible to show ownership, control, et cetera),' settlement offers are inadmissible to prove liability (but admissible to show bias or prejudice, or for other purposes),2 and so forth. Any exclusion of relevant evidence involves some distortion of reality in the sense that the picture presented to the trier of fact includes less information than the available total. That will be true whether the evidence is kept …
Experts, Stories, And Information, Richard O. Lempert
Experts, Stories, And Information, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
In the infancy of the jury trial, there were no witnesses. The jury was self-informing. Members of the jury were drawn from the community. It was expected that they would know, either firsthand or on the basis of what they had heard, the true facts of any disputed incident, and they were gathered together to say what those facts were. Ronald Allen and Joseph Miller, in their insightful paper, see the ideal of the self-informing jury as very much alive today. Allen and Miller tell us that jurors ideally should experience firsthand the factual information needed to arrive at rational …
Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert
Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
There are three ways in which stories may figure prominently at trials. First, litigants may tell stories to jurors. Not only is there some social science evidence that this happens, but trial lawyers have an instinctive sense that this is what they do. Ask a litigator to describe a current case and she is likely to reply, "Our story is ... " Second, jurors may try to make sense of the evidence they receive by fitting it to some story pattern. If so, the process is likely to feed back on itself. That is, jurors are likely to build a …
Practice And Procedure - Reservation Of Decision On Motion For Directed Verdict As Means Of Avoiding Unnecessary New Trials
Michigan Law Review
What may be done to remedy the situation if a jury brings in a verdict in favor of a party against whom a verdict should have been directed? This question becomes pertinent in view of the fact that judges, while hard pressed by counsel in the heat of trial, frequently wrongfully deny a motion for directed verdict and submit the case to the jury. One obvious remedy is the granting of a new trial by the trial judge, or by an appellate court after reversal. But this practice has proved eminently unsatisfactory, for it submits the aggrieved party to the …
Examination Of The Medical Expert, Harry B. Hutchins
Examination Of The Medical Expert, Harry B. Hutchins
Articles
The expert witness differs essentially from the ordinary witness in at least two particulars; first, in that the field of his testimony is outside the range of ordinary knowledge and experience; and, secondly, in that his testimony in the great majority of cases is in the form of opinions or conclusions that are deemed necessary for the proper guidance of the jury. It goes without saying that the 'lawyer who undertakes the examination of the expert should have such familiarity with the subject of inquiry as will enable him to develop it through the expert logically and clearly, but unfortunately …
The Physician As An Expert, Harry B. Hutchins
The Physician As An Expert, Harry B. Hutchins
Articles
Expert evidence is evidence of a scientific or technical character in regard to a matter that is outside the domain of ordinary experience and knowledge. The evidence is usually in the form of opinions or conclusions based upon facts that for the purposes of an opinion are assumed to be true, although it may be in regard to scientific facts. The expert is one who has had special training or opportunities in a particular subject that the ordinary witness has not enjoyed, and who has thereby acquired certain habits of judgment.that render his explanations and opinions in the field of …