Discovery is a bitch

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Trials can turn out really bad at times - the dicovery process can uncover things that people do not want uncovered. When you see a very public lawsuit and then a very quick out-of-court settlement, you can bet that the concept of discovery was not fully understood by one or more parties. From Karl Denninger writing at The Market Ticker:

Jussie Gets 'In The Butt' Smollett
I'm going to grab a big bowl and sit back to watch the ****show...

Chicago is vowing a civil suit against Jussie Smollett after the "Empire" actor "refused to reimburse" the city for the cost of investigating his controversial case.

He's gonna lose, and badly -- the standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence in a civil suit, not beyond a reasonable doubt.

But more to the point he's got a much bigger problem -- discovery.

The so-called "sealed records" are worthless in this regard, especially considering that the CPD released them before the sealing order was filed. Those are usable in a civil trial and what's worse since the criminal charges were dismissed I doubt he can get anywhere trying to take the 5th either.

That's the real bitch when you pull something and whoever you screw gets mad enough to sue; they get to file for discovery and damn near anything they want that is relevant to the case, they get -- and its public. You can try to have things sealed but you're likely to lose that motion; there are only a few legitimate ways to seal discovery in a civil suit other than by agreement (e.g. trade secrets, etc) and none of them are going to work in this case. "I don't want anyone to see it" doesn't get there.

Were I Jussie I'd have negotiated the invoice from the city and forked over the money rather than go down this road. Once they sue him he gets to pay the lawyers, even if he settles later, and that isn't going to be cheap.

It would be one thing if he had a reasonable chance of prevailing -- but I give him one chance in 10. Trying to throw the two brothers under the bus isn't likely to work, given that they have the check from Jussie. If it was one word against another, maybe -- but there's documentation and that's going to be damn hard to explain. Never mind that the civil trial record will likely bury any chance of him working ever again. Would you hire someone who gets nailed on a civil judgement for a hate-crime hoax when said person is a minority?

Heh - the wheels of justice may grind slow but they leave a very fine ash in their wake.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on April 5, 2019 8:40 PM.

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