George Bellows, Dempsey v. Firpo, 1924
Counsel in Thull v. Techtronic has an opportunity that some lawyers, but very few, get. They get to try the same case repeatedly against the same adversaries in different courts.
So they get to see their adversaries’ right hook and left jab in advance. And the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota gets the benefit of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit’s take on evidentiary fights that resulted in reversing a defense verdict in a trial in that circuit. (And, like in a boxing match, it sounds like the Court will be keeping time rather strictly.)
This makes this match-up one of the very most “distilled” or “vetted” trials of the year if not the decade in this district (along with Vaidyanathan). All experienced trial lawyers and all experienced trial judges know that the evidentiary issues at trial gush like oil rig geysers. Lawyers and judges frenetically struggle to cap the wellheads. Query whether this fact about civil litigation, generally, will make this trial, in particular, any more predictable (or “accurate” or “correct” in outcome (?))…