Thursdays are ‘dark’ days for the Roundup cancer trial, meaning lawyers, jurors and witnesses have a day to catch their breath and regroup. And after the fast and furious first three days of the trial, they probably can use the break.
After losing another juror on Wednesday morning, the trial proceeded with the testimony of plaintiff’s expert witness and former U.S. government scientist Christopher Portier. The testimony was provided via a video recorded in Australia last week.
During an afternoon break in Portier’s testimony, Judge Chhabria took a few moments to explain himself for certain comments he made to plaintiff’s lead counsel Aimee Wagstaff on Tuesday before sanctioning her for what he said was misconduct in her opening statement to the jury. (see prior blog entries for details.)
The following is a brief excerpt:
THE COURT: Before we bring in the jury, I want to
make a quick statement to Ms. Wagstaff.
I was reflecting on the OSC hearing last night, and I
wanted to clarify one thing. I gave a list of reasons why I
thought your conduct was intentional, and one of those reasons
was that you seemed to have prepared yourself in advance for —
that you would get a hard time for violating the pretrial
rulings. In explaining that, I used the word “steely,” and I
want to make clear what I meant by that.
I was using steely as an adjective for steeling yourself,
which is to make yourself ready for something difficult and
unpleasant. My point was that I perceived no surprise on your
part; and since lawyers typically seem surprised when they are
accused of violating pretrial rulings, that was relevant to me
on the issue of intent. But “steely” has another meaning as
well, which is far more negative. And I want to assure you
that that’s not the meaning that I was using nor was I
suggesting anything about your general character traits.
So I know you continue to disagree with my ruling and my
findings about intent, but I wanted to make that point very
clear.
MS. WAGSTAFF: Thank you, Your Honor.
