Federal Judiciary

Plaintiff's verdict in SynQor

By Michael C. Smith

This afternoon a jury in Judge T. John Ward's court in Marshall rendered a verdict for the plaintiff in the SynQor v. Artesy Technologies case, which involved several defendants.  The verdict was a complicated one and precise numbers are not yet available, but the judgment against the defendants seems to be in the $90 million range.

The case is one of the rare ones locally in that it went into a second week (it started last Monday) and had multiple defendants at trial, which resulted in issues like how much time the parties would have for opening and evidence - for example the defendant received a third again as much opening time as the plaintiff to accommodate the additional defendants.  The case was a little more common in that it represented the norm lately of the Marshall judges doubling up on the case, with Judge Ward hearing issues and trying the case with Magistrate Judge Everingham cranking out numerous rulings and recommendations on assorting evidentiary and other issues at the same time.  I particularly enjoyed (well, that might be a little too strong a word) Judge Everingham's rulings on admissibility of expert testimony where he clarified what, in light of the experts' reports, the experts could and could not testify to at trial.

The past several days has seen concurrent blizzards of JMOLs from the defendants as the case wound down, and it will be interesting seeing how all of those play out as well.  When there are multiple defendants and multiple claims, it's always a game of three-dimensional chess trying to figure out how the verdict gets to the judgment.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on December 21, 2010 (boomark / email).