The Trial Practice Tips Blog

The details of the new Illinois CLE requirements can be found in certain Supreme Court Rules that were amended by an order entered today. New lawyers must complete a 15 hour "basic skills course" (Rule 793). Other lawyers will be subject to yearly CLE requirements (Rule 794). Thanks to Jeremy Richey for the heads up.

How would you prosecute or defend the Vioxx trial that's happening right now in New Jersey? It's a question you can ask yourself as you watch Court TV's live coverage, available at the Court TV "Extra" site.

The sign-up process is easy, and it's free for 30 days. After that, access costs only $5.95 per month. You can cancel at any time. The only downside is that you can't record the proceedings--instead, you have to watch the proceedings live. And since the lawyers are straying from the pre-positioned microphones, the audio quality is not the best.

With these caveats, the Court TV website is not a bad way to get the Vioxx news as it's happening or, if you don't care about Vioxx, learn how civil trials are really conducted. 

Although there is no federal rule expressly allowing motions to reconsider, parties file them anyway. Some evidence is that the PACER electronic filing system allows you to categorize a motion as one "for reconsideration."

A body of case law describes when motions to reconsider are appropriate. Following is a section from a brief (not mine) that quotes from a number of Illinois cases on the issue:

A motion to reconsider is available to correct manifest errors of law and fact, or to present newly discovered evidence. Wolves v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., 1990 WL 84519, at *1 (N.D. Ill. 1990) (not reported in F. Supp.) (citing Publisher's Resource Inc. v. Walker-David Publications, Inc., 726 F.2d 557, 561 (7th Cir. 1985)). A motion to reconsider should be used neither to introduce new evidence that was available during original consideration, nor to introduce new legal theories. Calderon v. Reno, 56 F.Supp.2d 997, 998 (N.D. Ill. 1999) (citing Publisher's Resource, 762 F.2d at 561)).
     A motion to reconsider a remand order is proper "where the court has patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the adversarial issues presented to the Court by the parties, which made an error not of reasoning but of apprehension." Calderon, 56 F.Supp. 2d at 999 (citing Bank of Waunake v. Rochester Cheese Sales, Inc., 906 F.2d 1185, 1191 (7th Cir. 1990)). "A further basis for a motion to reconsider would be a controlling or significant change in the law or facts since the submission of the issue to the Court." State Bank of India v. Commercial Steel Corp., 2001 WL 423001, at *2 (N.D.Ill. 2001) (not reported in F.Supp.2d). "Such problems rarely arise and the motion to reconsider should be equally rare." State Bank of India v. Commercial Steel Corp., 2001 WL 423001, at *2 (N.D.Ill. 2001) (not reported in F.Supp.2d) (citing Rounds v. City of Chicago, No. 94 C. 1708, 1996 WL 99408, at *1 (N.D. Ill. March 5, 1996) (citations omitted), aff'd, 95 F.3d 1154 (7th Cir. 1996)).

That's a pretty good description of the circumstances under which a motion to reconsider might be appropriate, and I wanted to bookmark it here for future use.

The Vioxx litigation has received an unusual amount of press attention, probably because so many people took Vioxx after it came on the market in 1999--an estimated twenty million Americans. By comparison, only about six million Americans took the diet drugs fenfluramine and Redux, which led to most recent oversized pharmaceutical mass tort.

Following the first Vioxx verdict in the Texas Ernst case, in which the jury award the plaintiff $253 million, much of the commentary in the press focused on the jury's supposed inability to understand the science presented at the trial. Some suggested "professional jurors" were a better alternative; others suggested tort immunity for drug companies.

Last week at a presentation at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, I addressed some of these recent attacks on the jury system. Today I posted a transcript of my presentation on Legal Underground in the post "In Defense of the Jury System."

Three other panelists, all with a pro-tort-reform view, also spoke at the conference. Transcripts of their presentations should be available soon at the AEI website.

If you're an associate whose boss has just asked you to cross-examine one of the opponent's witnesses at trial, and you're wondering why--well, take a look at this post at Legal Underground: "An Amusing Trial Lawyer Anecdote?" It might hold the answer.