Taking Lemons and Making Lemonade

My last jury trial ended on Halloween of 2019. It was a unanimous jury verdict in my client’s favor after a very short deliberation. I now have a monster jury trial set for July 25, 2022. The final status conference date, which is the date that most things have to be done by, is July 1, 2022. It has been a vicious legal battle with a lot of money at stake.
I represent the plaintiff. I recently received a very unfavorable ruling on a motion brought by the defendants in my monster case. My expert witness provided a report indicating that it was physically impossible for him to provide an appraisal that contained a list of each and every piece of memorabilia and its value because of the sheer number of items. Despite this, the Judge ordered my client to provide supplemental responses to the discovery demands, without objection, in 20 days! The legal error here was ordering us to create a document that did not exist. It is one thing to provide information in your custody, control or possession, but this required the creation of something that did not exist.
Initially this looked like a death sentence for us. My expert said it could not be done. I did the research. I found that as suspected, we had no basis to appeal a discovery ruling in the middle of the case. That left a writ as the only form of appellate review. Unfortunately the chances of an appellate court rescuing us on a writ were slim to none. We had one other option here, asking the Court to reconsider its ruling. I was actually able to get the court to change its mind when it decided during an unrelated hearing to strike my demand for a jury trial and order a court trial instead. But the Court was adamant this time about what it wanted my client to do.
So, I enlisted the help of my home for part of the summer adult children (one visiting from Connecticut) and we embarked on a plan using computer technology to present the Jury with each piece of memorabilia, a description and its appraised price. We still have a long way to go. However, when the jury is presented with between six and nine million dollars worth of collectibles, it will be very beneficial to my client’s case.
This evidence never would have been available if it had not been for the defendants pushing so hard to have my client make that list. We call that: Taking Lemons and Making Lemonade!

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