A victory before a conservative trial court bred misplaced faith in appeal.

Evidence

After the defeat in the Court of Appeal, Cole was seriously demoralized. He had made a simple mistake: he hadn’t listened to his own teachings about not putting faith in the legal system. Padres had won the case in front of a conservative, white male Kern County Superior Court judge, he had figured; surely, the Court of Appeal would see the case the same way. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 467

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Procedural violations, not civil rights claims, won the Buttonwillow trial case. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 464; Winning a landmark legal ruling does not guarantee winning the underlying case — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1905; Prejudicial closing arguments can get a verdict overturned on appeal. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 858

Broader Connections

• Winning a landmark legal ruling does not guarantee winning the underlying case #expands (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1905