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Sunday, September 20, 2009

Courts - More on "David Jason Stinson found not guilty in football player’s death"

Updating this ILB entry from Sept. 18th, Andrew Wolfson has a Louisville Courier Journal story today titled "Stinson’s acquittal poses problems for civil lawsuit." Some quotes:

Jason Stinson’s acquittal won’t be admissible in the Feb. 15 trial of the wrongful death lawsuit that Max Gilpin’s parents filed against the former Pleasure Ridge High School football coach and seven other defendants.

But trial lawyers who aren’t involved in the case say it poses significant problems for Max’s parents because prospective jurors are bound to know that Stinson was exonerated on criminal charges.

“It is all over the press that this guy is innocent,” said Gary Weiss, who represents both plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases.

“It’s a bad problem,” added Ann Oldfather, a plaintiffs' trial lawyer.

Unlike the three-week criminal trial, in which prosecutors had to prove Stinson’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, lawyers for Max’s parents, Michele Crockett and Jeff Gilpin, will only have to show that is more likely than not that the negligence of Stinson and his co-defendants — other coaches and PRP officials — caused Max’s death from heat stroke on Aug. 23, 2008.

But they must still prove that the defendants’ actions caused Max to die, lawyers say, a proposition that a criminal jury rejected Thursday in finding Stinson not guilty of reckless homicide and wanton endangerment. * * *

In an interview Friday, Crockett, noting the lesser burden of proof in civil cases, said she intended to press on with the lawsuit: “I still feel that what the coaches and others did or did not do that day ultimately contributed to Max’s death.”

Attorney Todd Thompson, who represents Crockett in the civil case, was out of the country, but attorney Mike Cooper, who represents Jeff Gilpin, said in an interview that it is not uncommon for one jury to find a defendant not guilty in a criminal case, while another jury finds the defendant responsible and awards damages.

In Kentucky, for example, Oldfather and another lawyer won a $6.1 million verdict in 2007 for Louise Ogborn in her strip-search case against McDonald’s. A year earlier, a man accused of making the hoax calls that precipitated the search was acquitted on charges of impersonating a police officer.

Most famously, a Los Angeles civil jury returned a $33.5 million judgment against O.J. Simpson in 1997, two years after he was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

“Just because they are found not guilty doesn’t mean they are innocent,” Cooper said.

There is much more of interest in this lengthy report.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 20, 2009 10:43 AM
Posted to Courts in general