Legal Blog Watch also has a couple of posts (here and here) about a fraud case going through the American courts which resulted in a Rolah McCabe-like outcome, with a judge instructing a jury to assume that the defendant, Morgan Stanley had “engaged in massive fraud”. The West Palm Beach judge’s reasons are here. The judge’s instructions resulted from inadequate discovery of emails, which was itself said to be evidence of a consciousness of wrongdoing so as to support the inference giving rise to the jury direction. The result was a jury verdict for $1.57 billion, recently overturned for reasons unconnected with the e-discovery default. More detail here, in a long article about the stockbroking firm which blamed the destruction of its World Trade Centre offices on September 11 one too many times. And Overlawyered’s take is here.
