Verdicts yield leverage over corporate defendants even when legally disappointing

Evidence

At five o’clock, in the gray light of dawn, he got up again and went to take a shower. He stood for a long while, letting the warm water pour over him. And then, slowly, he started to feel better. It became clear to him what he had to do next. He had hoped for a jury that would embrace the “political” nature of the case. But he realized now that he could not depend on this jury to ring any bells in the corporate boardrooms of America. The case that he had tried to turn into an environmental crusade, the case that he had hoped would bring him fame and fortune, had suddenly turned back into an ordinary case again. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 2455

Categorization

• SEED: The strange arithmetic of ‘losing’ one defendant but still forcing the other into a settlement — what a court outcome is actually worth versus what it says.