What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[crazy canuck]

But it's a rare event.  As BB said, lawyers usually know not to ask too many questions.  The search for truth is not in the lawyer's mandate nor in the justice system, unfortunately.

BB was talking about criminal lawyers.    All other lawyers need to know every detail of their client's evidence.

[viper37]

But it's a rare event.  As BB said, lawyers usually know not to ask too many questions.  The search for truth is not in the lawyer's mandate nor in the justice system, unfortunately.

BB was talking about criminal lawyers.    All other lawyers need to know every detail of their client's evidence.

In my experience, in civil litigations, they do not care what is true or not, but they find the evidence they need to make it appear their client is saying the truth, without ever having him interrogated.

[Barrister]

In my experience, in civil litigations, they do not care what is true or not, but they find the evidence they need to make it appear their client is saying the truth, without ever having him interrogated.

Okay so you are in Quebec with a different legal system so I guess anything's possible, but in a civil lawsuit under the common law one of the early steps is always for the parties to be questioned under oath for discovery.

[crazy canuck]

But it's a rare event.  As BB said, lawyers usually know not to ask too many questions.  The search for truth is not in the lawyer's mandate nor in the justice system, unfortunately.

BB was talking about criminal lawyers.    All other lawyers need to know every detail of their client's evidence.

In my experience, in civil litigations, they do not care what is true or not, but they find the evidence they need to make it appear their client is saying the truth, without ever having him interrogated.

I find that hard to believe, as BB mentioned, clients need to be prepared for pretrial examination by the other side -  even in Quebec.

[viper37]

In my experience, in civil litigations, they do not care what is true or not, but they find the evidence they need to make it appear their client is saying the truth, without ever having him interrogated.

Okay so you are in Quebec with a different legal system so I guess anything's possible, but in a civil lawsuit under the common law one of the early steps is always for the parties to be questioned under oath for discovery.

my dad has been questionned a few times, but it's more about general stuff rather than go into specifics "what happenned on this day", "what did you do then".  It does not always happen, and definately not for all parties involved.  I've seen it happen in cases were the insurer is involved.  I've never seen them question the expertise or the possible conflicts of interests for an "expert" designated by one of the clients.  All I was ever told is if the adversary brings an engineed you need two to counterweight it, does not matter if the guy just writes bullshit totally out of his field of expertise or has totally ignored half the facts in the file.

[Barrister]

my dad has been questionned a few times, but it's more about general stuff rather than go into specifics "what happenned on this day", "what did you do then".  It does not always happen, and definately not for all parties involved.  I've seen it happen in cases were the insurer is involved.  I've never seen them question the expertise or the possible conflicts of interests for an "expert" designated by one of the clients.  All I was ever told is if the adversary brings an engineed you need two to counterweight it, does not matter if the guy just writes bullshit totally out of his field of expertise or has totally ignored half the facts in the file.

It's pretty much impossible for me to comment on litigation that happened to your dad in a whole different legal system.

When it comes to experts... I have found it's virtually impossible to get a judge to reject someone as an expert out-of-hand.  What can be more fruitful however is to get a judge to narrow their field of expertise - so they can only answer questions on a more narrow range of questions.

As for you have to have more experts I disagree.  Very early on in my career I was on for the plaintiffs in small claims court for a faulty engine rebuild (by the way small claims court does not exactly get many expert witnesses, but we had 'em).  I had one expert - a PhD Engineer with 30 years experience.  The insurance company had 2 or 3 "experts", but one was a mechanic and a second was an insurance adjustor.  As mentioned the judge did not refuse to recognize them as experts like I asked, but he did narrow their expertise and in the end had no problem preferring my single expert.

19 years later and I'm still proud of that one.

[Sheilbh]

When it comes to experts... I have found it's virtually impossible to get a judge to reject someone as an expert out-of-hand.  What can be more fruitful however is to get a judge to narrow their field of expertise - so they can only answer questions on a more narrow range of questions.

As for you have to have more experts I disagree.  Very early on in my career I was on for the plaintiffs in small claims court for a faulty engine rebuild (by the way small claims court does not exactly get many expert witnesses, but we had 'em).  I had one expert - a PhD Engineer with 30 years experience.  The insurance company had 2 or 3 "experts", but one was a mechanic and a second was an insurance adjustor.  As mentioned the judge did not refuse to recognize them as experts like I asked, but he did narrow their expertise and in the end had no problem preferring my single expert.

Yeah here the courts tend to try to limit the number of experts they have and the number of areas that need expert witnesses.

I have seen a judge more or less dismiss expert evidence as not helpful in reaching a conclusion if not out of hand

It was in a LIBOR fixing case and one side's expert was an academic at Oxford. But the QC cross-examining him walked through his statement and his model. He'd not applied the right filters or explained his timeframe which meant his model was including irrelevant trades from certain other financial centres and because of the timing issue had missed trades for about half the day. I think his style didn't help either - he tended to make very sweeping statements and speeches and would "correct" the question to what he should have been asked. But it was probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen - incredibly smooth and effective.

Although it didn't help too much because the judge found that the expert for the other side though better and more credible, hadn't actually got into the analysis. There was no issue with the fact that their team had done that work (I think he was an accountant) but it meant he was quite detached when being pushed on points and didn't seem to understand some of the parameters for the evidence he was giving or some of the key distinctions he was meant to be testifying about. Again it was very impressive by the QC who had a totally different style and was quite badgering and aggressive, but it got the job done

So the judge basically didn't rely too much on either of them if they disagreed and focused on the documentary evidence and (when supported by documents) practical testimony by traders.

[crazy canuck]

In my experience, in civil litigations, they do not care what is true or not, but they find the evidence they need to make it appear their client is saying the truth, without ever having him interrogated.

Okay so you are in Quebec with a different legal system so I guess anything's possible, but in a civil lawsuit under the common law one of the early steps is always for the parties to be questioned under oath for discovery.

my dad has been questionned a few times, but it's more about general stuff rather than go into specifics "what happenned on this day", "what did you do then".  It does not always happen, and definately not for all parties involved.  I've seen it happen in cases were the insurer is involved.  I've never seen them question the expertise or the possible conflicts of interests for an "expert" designated by one of the clients.  All I was ever told is if the adversary brings an engineed you need two to counterweight it, does not matter if the guy just writes bullshit totally out of his field of expertise or has totally ignored half the facts in the file.

If someone is writing an opinion outside their field of expertise, it is a relatively simple thing to persuade a judge to refuse to admit the portions of the opinion that fall outside their expertise.

Also, if the report assumes facts which are not proven during the trial, it is an even easier task to have the judge ignore the report entirely.

[crazy canuck]

When it comes to experts... I have found it's virtually impossible to get a judge to reject someone as an expert out-of-hand.  What can be more fruitful however is to get a judge to narrow their field of expertise - so they can only answer questions on a more narrow range of questions.

As for you have to have more experts I disagree.  Very early on in my career I was on for the plaintiffs in small claims court for a faulty engine rebuild (by the way small claims court does not exactly get many expert witnesses, but we had 'em).  I had one expert - a PhD Engineer with 30 years experience.  The insurance company had 2 or 3 "experts", but one was a mechanic and a second was an insurance adjustor.  As mentioned the judge did not refuse to recognize them as experts like I asked, but he did narrow their expertise and in the end had no problem preferring my single expert.

Yeah here the courts tend to try to limit the number of experts they have and the number of areas that need expert witnesses.

I have seen a judge more or less dismiss expert evidence as not helpful in reaching a conclusion if not out of hand

It was in a LIBOR fixing case and one side's expert was an academic at Oxford. But the QC cross-examining him walked through his statement and his model. He'd not applied the right filters or explained his timeframe which meant his model was including irrelevant trades from certain other financial centres and because of the timing issue had missed trades for about half the day. I think his style didn't help either - he tended to make very sweeping statements and speeches and would "correct" the question to what he should have been asked. But it was probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen - incredibly smooth and effective.

Although it didn't help too much because the judge found that the expert for the other side though better and more credible, hadn't actually got into the analysis. There was no issue with the fact that their team had done that work (I think he was an accountant) but it meant he was quite detached when being pushed on points and didn't seem to understand some of the parameters for the evidence he was giving or some of the key distinctions he was meant to be testifying about. Again it was very impressive by the QC who had a totally different style and was quite badgering and aggressive, but it got the job done

So the judge basically didn't rely too much on either of them if they disagreed and focused on the documentary evidence and (when supported by documents) practical testimony by traders.

One of my favourite moments was crossing an expert in a cost accounting case - we had THE guy who wrote all the relevant articles on the subject at hand.  They had a well meaning guy who was way out of his depth on this particular issue.  To demonstrate his lack of expertise I selected terms from the titles of the articles my guy had published which would have required expert knowledge to know, and asked their expert what they meant.  To his credit he did not try to guess and simply admitted he did not know.  From there I had no problem persuading the court not to qualify their guy as an expert in that field.   

[jimmy olsen]

But as I was looking at the Wiki page for Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball, it mentions another case where that defence succeeded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.

In the mid 90s Pepsi Co was running a promotion where you'd collect points and redeem them for different prizes.  In one commercial they showed you could redeem a Harrier jet for 7 million points.  One guy went out and bought 7 million points (total cost $700k) and demanded his jet.  The judge ruled in favour of Pepsi saying nobody would seriously believe that Pepsi would give away a fighter jet.

One of the most outrageous frauds ever perpetrated on the American public!

[Syt]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-insists-to-fox-news-that-deadly-capitol-riots-were-zero-threat

Trump Insists to Fox News That Deadly Capitol Riots Were 'Zero Threat'

Former President Donald Trump declared in all seriousness on Thursday night that there was "zero threat" during the deadly Jan. 6 insurrectionist riot at the U.S. Capitol, bizarrely asserting that the rioters had "great relationships" and were "kissing the police" throughout the siege.

Calling into pro-Trump Fox News host Laura Ingraham's show to ostensibly react to President Joe Biden's first press conference, the ex-president instead spent much of his time fixated on his own personal grievances, such as peddling the Big Lie that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him.

At one point in the interview, however, Ingraham asked Trump about the Department of Homeland Security cracking down on domestic violent extremism and whether he was concerned that the "DHS is going after people who may be your supporters."

The former president immediately invoked leftist organizations Black Lives Matter and antifa, complaining that "they don't go after those people" who "burn down our cities" while simultaneously defending right-wing extremists.

"But they go after people, I guess you would call them lean toward the right, and they wave American flags—in many cases, they are waving the American flag—and they love our country," Trump exclaimed. "And to those people, they are arresting them by the dozens but they don't go after antifa, who kill people by the way."

Ingraham then brought up the large National Guard presence that has surrounded the Capitol since the seditious riot that left five people dead— including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick—and over 100 police officers injured.

"Are you concerned that the U.S. Capitol after January 6th has become a fortress?" Ingraham asked the ex-president. "Protecting the Capitol from the people who are supposed to actually be the ones in charge here, not the people who are sitting in the Capitol and surrounding themselves by razor wire."

Trump, who was impeached for inciting the MAGA mob to storm the Capitol and prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden's election, called the response to the riots "disgraceful" before going into full gaslighting mode.

"It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat," Trump, who has been served with multiple civil suits related to the riot, bellowed.

"Look, they went in, they shouldn't have done it," he continued. "Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had great relationships, and a lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out."

Referencing the hundreds of arrests and charges that have resulted from the Capitol insurrection, Trump did concede that "some things should happen to them" before once again shifting his attention back to his favorite bogeymen—antifa and BLM.

"But when I look at antifa, in Washington even, with what they did to Washington and what they did to other locations and the destruction, and frankly, the killing and the beating up of people, and nothing happens to them whatsoever, why aren't they going after antifa?!" Trump raged.

Ingraham, for her part, tried to do a bit of clean-up for the former president, helpfully leading Trump along the way.

"But you would say that people who commit crimes, regardless of what their political affiliations are, should be prosecuted," she said. "Your complaint is that the individuals committing the crimes in Portland and Minneapolis, et cetera, are not being prosecuted. I want to clarify that, Mr. President."

Trump, getting the hint, replied: "Absolutely! What you said is exactly right. I hope that is what I said, too."

[Caliga]

I hope that is what I said, too."

[Syt]

I hope that is what I said, too."

I just finished watching season 4 of Parks & Recreation where Leslie runs against the dimwit son of the local business tycoon. I imagine it was funny in 2012, but some of it felt a bit too close to home after the 2016 campaign.

[Syt]

[Valmy]

You only kept them on because they had been there for so long? Really? You claim they put millions of lives at risk but you didn't fire them because you were so used to having them around?

I can't see why people admire this man as a great president and leader, even in his own words he sucks.