He lost on the grounds of a statue of limitations defense which is exactly the kind of thing which is easily appealable.

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qyph 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you a lawyer? IANAL but my understanding is it would be difficult for an appeal to succeed. Appeals courts only evaluate review matters of law, not of fact. Whether is has been more than the 3 year limit the statute of limitations places is a matter of fact I think. And the advisory jury makes this much harder to appeal. What do you think the grounds for appeal will be?

	▲	colechristensen 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not saying it will succeed, but what counts as having passed the statue of limitations and various workarounds and modifications of the time period particularly in cases like this where the acts in question weren't necessarily a single event but progressive activity is the kind of question which is the bread and butter of an appeals court.

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frankchn 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In this case, I think it is a jury's finding of fact re: the statute of limitations. Unless the appellate court finds that the trial court and jury is clearly erroneous, it will usually give significant deference to that finding.

	▲	dctoedt 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's even harder than "clearly erroneous" (the standard applied when a judge makes fact findings without a jury). Under the Seventh Amendment, if a hypothetical reasonable jury could have reached the result that the actual jury did, then that's the ball game [0], even if the trial judge or appellate-court judges would have reached a different result. [0] Assuming that the trial judge didn't materially screw up in admitting or excluding evidence, or in instructing the jury about the law, and also assuming no proof of juror bias or improper influence.

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gamblor956 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A state of limitations case is actually one of the strongest kinds of legal defenses a defendant can have.

It's a foundational issue that goes to whether the court is even allowed to proceed with the case. A defendant could be guilty/liable/whatever of the alleged claims, and it wouldn't matter. If the statute of limitations has run, they're in the clear.

The only counter to an SOL defense is to try and claim that the SOL was paused for some reason, but those exceptions are very narrow and wouldn't apply here (and in the real world very rarely apply to civil cases).

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enraged_camel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pretty sure it's the opposite: appeals mostly only work when the decision is not clear cut, and the statute of limitations is.