War Stories
Bring together any group of experienced trial lawyers and pretty soon they’re going to be sharing “war stories” about their experiences at trial, in deposition, or in front of one of the courts of appeals.
Here are some of our favorite stories from our years of trial experience.
The BankAmerica case generated many war stories. Here are four.
We were opposed in the case by some of the largest and most highly-respected law firms in the country. Martin Green calculated that the law firms opposing us totalled over 2,000 lawyers. But we did not let those numbers intimidate us, and we kept up an unrelenting barrage of depositions and motions.
When Missouri first authorized riverboat gambling, Martin Green represented a number of clients interested in competing for a gaming license. His clients included several well-known Las Vegas gaming companies, less famous but established operators, and even entrepreneurs who wanted to break into the business.
Allen Press says that the funniest thing that ever happened to him in a courtroom happened several years ago in a case he tried with Joe Jacobson in the City of St. Louis. We represented two gentlemen who had been defrauded in a business transaction by their former lawyers.
The BankAmerica case consumed years and thousands of hours of our time. In fact, although the district court’s approval of the settlement was affirmed by the Eighth Circuit in 2004, we’re still working on the case. Jonathan Andres has devoted huge hours since 2004 to administering the settlement and dealing with the surprises that can pop up when you’re distributing half a billion dollars to over 100,000 class members.
If a lawyer asks the right questions at the right time, sometimes an opposing party will give a case away. It happened to Scott Rose once when he represented a cement manufacturer trying to collect a $500,000 bill, which the purchaser refused to pay on the ground that the cement had been defective. Specifically, the purchaser claimed that the cement broke into pieces within days after it dried.
Allen Press recently tried a case on behalf of a real estate developer. The case was against a title company for breach of a construction disbursing agreement. The case took four days to try. After about three hours of deliberations, the jury sent a note to the Judge which asked: “How do we compute the legal fees?” This was pretty stunning. We had not even asked for legal fees and were not entitled to them! The Judge sent a note back to the jury that they “should be guided by the instructions.” Ten minutes later, the jury came back with a verdict which awarded our client every penny we were seeking.
During the BankAmerica case, it became apparent that defendants’ witnesses were incredibly well-prepared. Maybe we could surprise a witness once, but as soon as we asked a question or used a document, every witness from that point forward knew about the question or the document and was prepared with an answer. It was amazing.
Joe Jacobson represented a banker who had been sued by numerous farmers who claimed that the banker was in cahoots with an insurance agent who had defrauded the farmers by selling them bogus investments. The banker’s bank had lent the farmers money against their farms, which the farmers used to buy the “investments.”