Maybenaut wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 1:14 pm
noblepa wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 12:52 pm
“ . . . and how there should be a mistrial and a directed verdict.” – Trump lawyer Alina Habba, today on Fox News.
IANAL, and this may be picking fly shit out of pepper, but doesn't the phrase "directed verdict" only apply when there is a jury (which she forgot to ask for)?
Yes.
I think she probably means "summary judgement". BTW, Judge Engoron has already issued a summary judgement in this case, that Trump is liable for fraud.
Also, if there were a mistrial, there would be no verdict at all, directed or otherwise, would there?
Nope. Mistrial gets you a do-over (and perhaps a superior bargaining position).
These seem like things that a pre-law undergraduate student would know and would not misuse in this way. Certainly a first year law student would.
I don't think that either one is going to happen.
They won’t, and Habba knows it. This is all theatre.
I demur in part.
It's true that "verdict" refers to the decision of a jury after the conclusion of a trial. It would be a kind of malapropism for Habba to refer after the trial to Judge Engoron's "decision" as a "verdict."
See CPLR 4213 "Decision of the court."
However, the motion that Habba was discussing is known formally as a "Motion for judgment during trial" or "judgment as a matter of law" under CPLR 4401, which applies both to bench trials and jury trials. It's different from a motion for summary judgment before trial under CPLR 3212.
CPLR 4401 motions are almost invariably referred to as "directed verdict motions," even in the relatively formal context of appellate decisions.*
See Siegel** Practice Commentaries C4401:4 ("The meatiest motion of CPLR 4401 is the one that bench and bar will probably always call the motion for a directed verdict.").
So I'll give her a pass on this usage, although not on her notion that Trump's threatened CPLR 4401 motion has a prayer of success.
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* In fact New York State appellate decisions are frequently not particularly formal, as they are usually short, and sometimes so laconic as to be obscure, the result of a big busy court system with virtually unlimited interlocutory appeals.
** David D. Siegel (1931-2014), a professor at Albany Law School, was for generations the undisputed leading authority on New York civil procedure. His definitive treatise,
New York Civil Practice, is a delight to read for its clear, shrewd, and witty prose.