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Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie
Well....there's a little more to that. The venue was certainly hand-picked. The plaintiff is the one who files the first court papers to sue, and can thus pick which court they go to, provided the court has jurisdiction. It certainly is no accident that this case was tried in San Francisco. I live not too far from Madison County, Illinois, which contains East St Louis, and has the most generous juries in the country for lawsuits against corporations. Lawyers will usually pick it over every other court in the nation if they are trying to win a big verdict against a big company.
When the jury is being selected, each side may make challenges to particular individuals to get them excluded for possible bias. Here is an article about that process, written by one lawyer to other lawyers:
https://www.lexology.com/library/det...a-ca090da98c9a
Without knowing the specifics of the case, I don't know how hard Monsanto fought the jury selection process. They may have just given up on finding anyone in San Francisco who does not have bias against them. From a tactical standpoint, Monsanto's legal resources are probably best used on appeal. They probably knew they were going to lose at trial court, and are are fully expecting a very large reduction of that jury's award when the verdict is appealed. The appeal will take time, and in all likelihood, the unfortunate plaintiff will die before he ever sees any of that money. |
I am not so sure the court was hand picked. The plaintiff lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay area and the trial was held in San Francisco. It is certainly possible that it was handpicked within the San Francisco area, I don't know
