Well, looks like my wife lost about $75,000.00 today

I know, I'm a legal simplton, but one thing I don't understand is seeing that Sherwin quit using lead in paint in the 50's well BEFORE it was realized to be a health hazard, in which a 1978 ruling suppressed lead-paint all together. And still Sherwin, and NL can be held responsible, liable, or even guilty of "negligence"

Anyhow, seeing that the majority of her retirement is held in Sherwin stock, yep, so far she lost about $75K by the drop on the exchanges.

If the Rhode Island suit goes through then I wonder how many other states will file suite,and then I wonder about the strength of the companies future. :huh: Things around here arn't very happy right now....

But I suppose on the brighter side, it's just a couple months till boating season. I wish it would hurry up!

del

I agree that a smart jury won't get fooled by a great lawyer. That is why intelligent, capable people need to be on juries. A jury full of morons is not likely to come to the right conclusion.

I served on a jury in 1983. It it wasn't for me and one other moderately intelligent person the kid would have been convicted. The first vote was 10-2 for guilty on all three counts. It was a weird case. The prosecutor sucked badly. The defense lawyer was BRILLIANT.

The kid was 20 years old. A student at Menlo College near Palo Alto. He was about 6'3, 220lbs, good looking, well dressed, and polite. He was from a very wealthy Lebanese family based out of London. Plaintiff was about 35, not pretty, not ugly, kind of average looking. She ran a typing service that was used by a lot of the students at the college. His version of the events was that after flirting with each other for several months she came on pretty strong when he came by to pick up a term paper she had typed up for him. Some consensual kissy face happened. She admitted it. The kid whipped out his johnson and she took hold of it. Then she decided that maybe they shouldn't be doing this in her office as her nasty bitch friend was out in the hall. She put a stop to the activities and he cooperated. Words were exchanged. He went home, picked up some porn videos and made her way back to the office. The cops were there and arrested him for assault, indecent exposure, and kidnapping. What actually happened was a "mistake of fact". Her testimony was shredded by an awesome lawyer, statements she made to a private investigator, and her own pathetic performance on the stand. Her star witness was the nasty bitch. She didn't make any sense and ranted about the evils of men. His lawyer pointed out that what had actually occured was a "mistake of fact", ie, a misunderstanding of the situation took place. He thought he was going to get laid. She was going to cooperate but saw her nasty friend in the hall outside her office and stopped the activities. He took off to get the porn and nasty friend called the cops and more or less forced her friend into the whole mess.

Even after the testimony the vote was 10-2 on all counts. To this day I can't believe how STUPID these morons were. One idiot even said that he wouldn't have been charged if he wasn't guilty. The woman who voted against conviction and I were able to get the jurors to review the testimony and think hard about the credibility of the testimony on both sides. After several hours of deliberations we ended up 12-0 to aquit on 2 of 3 counts. The idiot held out until the next day to convict on indecent exposure, even though the office had one door, high windows, and the only person who saw anything was the plaintiff. Idiot finally went along with the rest of us on the last vote of the day as he didn't want to miss another day of work. He was quite pissed about it.

After the trial was over I was chatting with the defendant and the prosecutor. Nasty bitch came up to the defendant with the plaintiff in tow and loudly threatened that "The criminal trial may be over, but the civl suit was still on and he was going to pay, one way or another." The plaintiff looked like she wanted to run away and hide. I actually felt sorry for her.

The moral to the story is when you get a jury summons please show up and do your civic duty. Try to get on a jury and do a good job. Our system depends on it.

Think about this next time you get a jury summons.

One of my BILs lost a lot of my respect recently when he stated "Jury duty is for people who are too stupid to get out of it." He is not a complete bonehead. He has been CEO of an US company owned by a large Japanese company. He is a successful business executive. I pointed out that he had ended up in civil court over actions taken by the CFO of a family owned business where he was CEO. I reminded him that he was able to escape civil liability only through the work of a great lawyer and a decent jury. If he had had a dumbass jury the results might have been different. He didn't like the feedback much. He did understand the point.

tschnautz@gmail.com wrote: