Closing argument is a very, very important part of jury trials to sum up the evidence in the context / theme of your case based on the applicable law. It is your last opportunity to talk directly to the jury about the theme of your case. Check out this article for the purpose of closing argument.

While lawyers are afforded latitude in presenting closing argument, improper and prejudicial argument could result in an appellate court granting a new trial. The opposing party must, however, timely object to the improper and prejudicial argument in order to properly preserve this objection for appeal. This is typically done at the time of the prejudicial argument with the opposing counsel moving the trial judge to declare a mistrial. See R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Gafney, 41 Fla.L.Weekly D744b (Fla. 4^th DCA 2016) quoting Engle v. Liggett Grp., Inc., 945 So.2d 1246, 1271 (Fla. 2006) (“If the issue of an opponent’s improper argument has been properly preserved by objection and motion for mistrial, the trial court should grant a new trial if the argument was ‘so highly prejudicial and inflammatory that it denied the opposing party its right to a fair trial.”). The standard of review on appeal for a motion for a mistrial or new trial based on improper closing is an abuse of discretion standard of review. Gafney, supra.

In Gafney, a wrongful death case against tobacco manufacturers, the plaintiff’s lawyers made improper comments to the jury asking the jury to “send a message” to the tobacco companies through their compensatory damage award in the verdict. The plaintiff’s lawyers also insinuated in closing argument that the defendant’s lawyers were involved in a conspiracy to cover-up the addictive nature of smoking cigarettes.

“Sending a Message” Closing Argument

The Fourth District held that “sending a message” argument is inappropriate when asking the jury to send a message with respect to compensatory damages (since this is the purpose of punitive damages and not compensatory damages):

“Send a message” arguments have been defined as those that ask a jury to “award money not based on the proof supporting the proper recoverable damages allowed in a wrongful death action, but to remedy wrongful, intentional, as opposed to negligent, conduct,” and those that “suggest[ ] to the jury that a significant verdict will send a message to stop [such] experiences from happening and will make others less likely to act irresponsibly.” The overwhelming weight of Florida jurisprudence informs us that “send a message” arguments are clearly inappropriate when utilized in a way that links the “sending of the message” to a compensatory damage award, and not to the entitlement to, or amount of, punitive damages.

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Exhorting a jury with a “call to action” to use its verdict to “speak loud and speak clear” via a compensatory damage award, as was done repeatedly here, is improper. … However, today we clarify that even when both claims are at issue, a plaintiff may not utilize “send a message” and conscience of the community arguments when discussing whether the plaintiff should be compensated, due to the potential for the jury to punish through the compensatory award. Appellee’s counsel’s comments in this case served only to divert the jurors’ attention from the proper consideration.

Gafney, supra (internal citation omitted).

Ad Hominem Attack on Opposing Counsel

The Fourth District also held that closing argument that insinuated that defendant’s counsel was involved in a conspiracy was inappropriate. Closing argument is not intended to attack an opposing counsel for being part of an improper scheme:

There is no question that appellee’s counsel went outside the broad parameters of permissible closing argument when he turned his commentary on opposing counsel. These statements were totally irrelevant to the issue of appellants’ liability. The insinuation that appellants’ attorneys were engaged in a conspiracy with either the defendants or third parties to mislead, conceal, or manipulate as part of an on-going scheme did not merely push the envelope, but instead went wholly beyond the pale.

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Accusations of wrongdoing by opposing counsel, such as those made in this case, would likely be improper even if made solely to a judge. Here, the comments achieved no other purpose than to discredit appellants’ attorneys in the eyes of the jury, planting in the juror’s minds the thought that the attorneys themselves were engaged in nefarious behind-the-scenes acts….

Gafney, supra.

In another example, you can check out this article for improper closing argument leading to a new trial in a trial against an insurance company.

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

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Interesting new Florida Supreme Court case regarding the discoverability of an opposing party’s attorney’s fees records in a dispute regarding the reasonableness of your fees.

For instance, say you are entitled to your reasonable attorney’s fees after prevailing in a dispute. The parties are entitled to an evidentiary fee hearing to determine the reasonableness of your fees—to determine the reasonable hourly rate and number of expended hours. Oftentimes, the party that prevailed serves discovery on the opposing / contesting party to discover their attorney’s fees records. The opposing / contesting party typically objects to this discovery as being irrelevant. But, not so fast…

The Florida Supreme Court in Patton v. Geico Ins. Co., 41 Fla.L.Weekly S115a (Fla. 2016) recently chimed in on this specific issue in a matter where a party recovered a judgment against an insurance carrier. The Florida Supreme Court expressed:

[T]he billing records of opposing counsel are relevant to the issue of reasonableness of time expended in a claim for attorney’s fees, and their discovery falls within the discretion of the trial court when the fees are contested….The hours expended by the attorneys for the [defendant] insurance company will demonstrate the complexity of the case along with the time expended, and may belie a claim that the number of hours spent by the plaintiff was unreasonable, or that the plaintiff is not entitled to a full lodestar computation, including a multiplying factor.

It is safe to say that this rationale is probably not limited to an entitlement of attorney’s fees against an insurance company. Rather, the rationale could reasonably apply to any dispute where the attorney’s fees are contested. What if the opposing / contesting party had a higher hourly rate? What if the opposing / contesting party billed more hours?  The answers to these questions are the reasons why the opposing / contesting party’s attorney’s fees records are sought when your fees are contested.

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

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During the voi dire / jury selection process, a party is entitled to 3 peremptory challenges. This means a party can strike prospective jurors for any race-neutral reason. There are times where a party uses a peremptory challenge to strike a juror and the opponent believes the peremptory challenge is being used for a racially motivated reason (i.e., to strike a particular prospective juror due to that juror’s race or ethnicity). Even when the proponent of the peremptory challenge explains the race-neutral reason for the challenge, the opponent believes that the race-neutral reason is merely a pretext.

The Second District Court of Appeal in Spencer, Jr. v. State of Florida, 41 Fla.L.Weekly D700c, a criminal matter, discussed the proper steps or procedure to follow when an opponent believes a peremptory challenge is being used for a racially motivated reason. In Florida, this is oftentimes called the Melbourne procedure or Melbourne hearing after the Florida Supreme Court case Melbourne v. State, 679 So.2d 759 (Fla. 1994).

It is helpful to think of the three “steps” as three decisions made by the trial judge during the Melbourne hearing. Phrased as questions, those decisions are:

1. Has the opponent properly invoked the Melbourne procedure by (a) objecting, (b) demonstrating the venireperson’s protected classification, and (c) requesting the court to have the proponent of the challenge state a neutral reason for it?

2. Has the proponent of the peremptory challenge provided a facially neutral explanation for the challenge?

3. Has the opponent of the challenge, following the facially neutral explanation, met its burden of persuasion to establish that the facially neutral reason is a prextext?

In a case where the State’s peremptory challenge is ultimately granted and the defendant’s objection is overruled at the end of a full Melbourne hearing, the actual decision-making process involves more than three components. The three decisions seem to involve the following components:

In step 1:

(a) The State moves to exercise a peremptory challenge for venire person X [prospective juror].

(b) The defendant objects, showing that venireperson X falls within a protected class and requesting a neutral reason for the peremptory challenge.

(c) The court finds the defendant’s objection to be sufficient.

In step 2:

(a) The court asks the State for a neutral reason for the peremptory challenge.

(b) The State provides the reason or reasons that it claims are neutral.

(c) The defendant is given an opportunity to respond.

(d) The court determines that the reason is facially neutral.

In step 3:

(a) The court asks the defendant if he wishes to make a genuineness objection.

(b) If the defendant chooses to make that objection, the defendant is permitted to make an argument and explain the facts and circumstances that support the defendant’s claim that the facially neutral reason is a pretext.

(c) The State is given an opportunity to respond.

(d) The court makes its ruling that the facially neutral reason for the peremptory strike is genuine, explaining as necessary the basis for that ruling.

(e) Finally, if necessary, the defendant asks the court to provide any additional finding or clarity in the ruling to preserve the issue for appeal.

Spencer, Jr., supra.

Step 3 of the Melbourne procedure deals with the genuineness of the race-neutral reason given by the proponent of the peremptory challenge. In other words, the opponent has the burden of persuasion showing that the race-neutral reason was nothing more than a pretext for a racially motivated intent. The opponent will always have the burden of persuasion during this process including ensuring that the record is sufficient and his/her objection stated. The Second District in Spencer, Jr. explained:

Thus, the decision the trial court is called upon to make in step 3 has little to do with the substance of the reason given by the lawyer that requests to strike the venireperson; it has to do with the lawyer’s intent. The trial court is called upon to determine whether the lawyer presenting the explanation for the peremptory challenge, as an officer of the court, is concealing an improper motive. Ultimately, the question the trial court must answer is whether the lawyer has truthfully provided a neutral reason or whether the lawyer is either deceiving himself as a matter of subconscious prejudice or, even worse, simply lying to the court. “Genuineness,” thus, is really a question of whether a lawyer is being disingenuous.

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If it is truly presumed that lawyers exercise peremptory challenges in a nondiscriminatory manner, then the trial court should not be expected to initiate on its own a genuineness challenge of every facially neutral reason. This is particularly true when no party has responded to the neutral reason with a claim that it is a pretext. Given the seriousness of a charge that a lawyer is providing a pretextual reason for a challenge, the opponent should be expected to object to the facially neutral reason as a pretext. It is unquestionably the better practice for a trial court, having made a determination of neutrality under step 2 of the Melbourne analysis, to ask the opponent whether he or she wishes to challenge the genuineness of the proponent’s reason, but we see no reason to reverse a judgment and sentence following an entire trial when the trial court omits this step without objection from anyone.

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Again, it is the better practice for a trial court to affirmatively ask an opponent to state all of the circumstances the opponent believes support a claim of pretext, but if the trial court omits this step, it should be incumbent upon the opponent to object and ask to place into the record the circumstances that it wishes the trial court to consider and the appellate court to review. Often it may seem apparent to the trial court that the neutral reason is not a pretext. If the court jumps ahead because of the judge’s own thought process, it should be the opponent who has an obligation to slow the decision-making process and to make certain the record is adequate.

 

Under Melbourne, it is the opponent of the challenge that has the burden of persuasion from the beginning to the end. 

Spencer, Jr., supra.

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

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If you are going to raise a Daubert objection or challenge (or request a Daubert hearing), you need to TIMELY do so before the expert witness testifies. A Daubert motion / challenge / hearing relates to the admissibility of an expert witness’ testimony. As you can imagine, this is an extremely important issue as many cases depend on expert witness testimony to support their burden of proof.

In Rojas v. Rodriguez, 41 Fla.L.Weekly D423a (Fla. 3d DCA 2016), a defendant raised a Daubert objection post-verdict. The defendant was challenging the admissibility of the testimony of plaintiff’s neurosurgeon expert in requesting a new trial. The trial court granted the defendant’s motion. On appeal, the appellate court reversed ordering the reinstitution of the jury’s verdict because the defendant did NOT timely raise its Daubert objection:

Moreover, it was incumbent upon the defendant, as the challenging party, to timely raise a Daubert objection and request a hearing before the trial court. Given the trial court’s role as “gatekeeper” in the Daubert context, it stands to reason that such an objection must be timely raised to allow the trial court to properly perform its role:…

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Here, there was no timely Daubert objection, nor is there any indication that exceptional circumstances existed to merit consideration of the defendant’s untimely objection. As such, the trial court erred in granting the defendant’s motion. Accordingly, we reverse the order on appeal and remand so that the trial court may reinstitute the jury’s verdict. Because the defendant failed to make a timely Daubert objection, we do not reach the issue of whether the neurosurgeon’s testimony would have been admissible under Daubert.

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

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Below is an example in a criminal trial of the exception to the hearsay rule referred to as admissions against party opponents when a party’s agent makes an out-of-court statement. Check out this article and this article for more on this important hearsay exception embodied in Florida Statute s. 90.803(18).

In Osorio v. State of Florida, 41 Fla.L.WeeklyD547b (Fla. 4^th DCA 2016), the police used a confidential informant to make an arrest in a drug case. The confidential informant happened to be a co-worker of the defendant (that had previously been arrested on an unrelated drug charge and turned into an informant to obtain credit in his prosecution). The defendant was relying on an entrapment defense. During the defendant’s cross-examination of a detective at trial, the court refused to allow the detective to testify about an issue that the co-worker / informant relayed to the detective. Then, when the defendant took to stand to testify, the trial court refused to allow the defendant to testify about statements his co-worker / informant made. The court precluded this testimony based on the hearsay rule since both the detective and defendant would be testifying about out-of-court statements from the co-worker / informant offered for the truth of the matter asserted.

Could the co-worker / informant, acting as an agent of the police, be classified as a party-opponent to fall within the hearsay exception known as admissions against party opponents.   The court said yes!

“[A]n agent is one who consents to act on behalf of some person, with that person’s acknowledgment, and is subject to that person’s control.” Osorio, supra, citing Goldschmidt v. Holman, 571 So.2d 422, 424, n.5 (Fla. 1990).

The court held that the co-worker / informant was serving as an agent since the police encouraged his involvement including setting up the drug-buy that led to the defendant’s arrest in furtherance of obtaining credit in his prosecution.  As an agent, the co-worker / informant’s out-of-court statements did fall within the hearsay exception known as admissions against a party opponent. The statements made by the co-worker / informant were statements by the party’s [the state / police] agent concerning a matter within the scope of his agency and made during the existence of the relationship.   See Fla. Stat. s. 90.803(18).  The court held it was error not to allow the defendant to introduce these out-of-court statements that restricted the defendant’s ability to put on his entrapment defense.

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.

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