By: Sara Kropf I don’t care what jury consultants say, picking a jury is an art and not a science. For most trial lawyers, it’s based on gut feelings and sizing people up quickly and peeks at what a juror’s t-shirt says or what book she’s reading. The dirty little...
By: Sara Kropf The hardest appeal to win is one based on insufficiency of the evidence. It argues that “the jury got it wrong.” Courts of appeal do not look kindly upon this argument, not only because it forces the court to dig deep into the record but because it asks...
By: Sara Kropf I’ve written several times before about hedge fund owner David Ganek’s groundbreaking lawsuit against federal agents and prosecutors in New York. See my posts here and here. As I described the case: The plaintiff is David Ganek, the former head of...
By: Sara Kropf David Brooks apparently lived a rather lavish lifestyle. As the head of a successful body armor company, he was rumored to have thrown a $10 million bat mitzvah party for his daughter that included performances by 50 Cent and Aerosmith. In 2007, the fun...
By: Sara Kropf What happens if a defendant’s cash is subject to forfeiture but he also owes someone else money? Who gets the forfeited cash? In a recent case out of the First Circuit, the court applied the forfeiture statutes to deny a general creditor payment of the...
By: Sara Kropf I was perusing recent opinions from the courts of appeal for possible blog post ideas when I came across an odd-looking errata sheet. Here’s an excerpt: That’s odd, I thought. I took a look at the original opinion in the case. The First Circuit wrote an...
By: Sara Kropf A few months ago, I wrote a blog post predicting that the Fourth Circuit would stop allowing federal prosecutors to seize untainted assets before conviction. (Buffing fingernails on shirt.) And now it has. Okay, my prognostication was not exactly out of...
By: Sara Kropf Venue seems like one of those boring topics we learned in law school that doesn't have much practical application. But in a recent case out of the Fourth Circuit, a defendant won the dismissal of a charge based on lack of venue. Maybe you should have...
By: Sara Kropf Perhaps the most troubling type of criminal forfeiture is the pretrial restraint of untainted assets. The Department of Justice will seize assets, before proving a single allegation of wrongdoing, even where those assets are not linked to the...
By: Sara Kropf Having a business partner can be a wonderful advantage. But it can also be dangerous if your business partner turns out to be unethical. Karen Olson, a former Alaska executive director of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service...