Mock Trial Part Two; Pre-Trial Motion Mayhem

“Alright, folks,” Judge Mathews said, calling everyone to attention. “Here’s my rulings. First, on the Motion to Dismiss from the Defence, I’m reserving comment or ruling until after the rest of the trial - it’s no fun if I rule in favour, but I’m also not telling you if it wouldn’t have worked. Points will be awarded at the end.”

That dashed your Hail Mary hopes that one big swing could win for your side, but it also made sense. There wasn’t really a point to all of this if you could just get the case dismissed and the Plaintiffs couldn’t even fight it.

With the big one out of the way, however, Mathews started ripping into the rest of the motions of both sides. They were almost all motions for the suppression of evidence by both sides, though Eric had also filed a motion for a change of venue based on the fact that the county jurisdiction seemed to rule in favour of plaintiffs against insurance companies a little over 80% of the time, showing a likelihood of bias.

That one got a smirk and laugh out of Mathews, who denied the motion but told Eric he’d made a decent case for it on the merits.

He tossed out almost all of the motions to suppress from both sides on their merits, which wasn’t too surprising. Motions to Suppress were usually criminal case matters since it was usually related to bad actions on the side of law enforcement. In a civil case, the space for that to actually apply was generally fairly small. Still, both teams had tried, and Judge Mathews narrowed them down to one each from the Defence and the Plaintiffs. He then handed them over to opposing counsel and gave you a maximum of an hour to formulate defences against the motions.

The good news was that the four of you had strategized, trying to figure out what your opponents would try to get tossed. The bad news was that even though you had pre-planned defences, you didn’t have witnesses to call in for this part of the trial. The first responders to the major pileup included police, and it was different testimonies that both sides were trying to get tossed. You were going to need to argue in favour of an officer’s actions to combat the Plaintiff’s motion while accusing another officer at the same time.

“Alright,” Sabrina said after quickly scanning the motion. “The one they got through is on Officer Penholt.”

“He’s the officer who found the bag of pot in the trunk of the plaintiff’s car, right?” Eric asked.

“Exactly,” Sabrina nodded. “They’re arguing it was an unreasonable search without a warrant, and no criminal charges were brought forward, so it should be immaterial to the civil case.”

“Well, we’ve already got that one prepared,” you said. “The pot was in the open, and he saw it while checking for injured people in the pileup.”

“We should split up the problems,” Gemma said. “John and Eric work on the defence, and Sabrina and I work on attacking their defence.”

“Actually,” Eric said. “I’ve been thinking about this. Follow me for a second. Our case doesn’t rely on the pot at all, right?” You all shook your heads. “So what if we just let them have it? We agree it’s immaterial to the civil litigation. We know we can’t prove that the pot in the trunk means the driver was intoxicated. That way we look more agreeable to Mathews and maybe buy some goodwill.”

Sabrina chewed on the inside of her lip in thought and then glanced at Gemma, who shrugged, and then at you.

“I think he might be right,” you said. “Remember what Garrison said about playing to the Judge. If we look like we’re fighting everything tooth and nail, we look **** and Mathews knows this case inside and out. The pot is probably a red herring in the story, and if we ignore it instead of fighting over it we might look a lot better for it.”

“OK, Sabrina nodded. “We ignore the pot and let them suppress the testimony. There wasn’t anything else in Penholt’s story we needed, right?”

“He was… a tertiary source for a couple of things, but we’ve got them covered anyways,” Gemma said, already having pulled Penholt’s file from our list of witnesses and scanning our notes.

“Perfect,” Sabrina said. “Then we focus on defending our motion. Which one was it?”

“He didn’t say,” you said, shaking your head. “So we either need to ask him, which means we ask to approach the bench and they send someone as well and we give away we’re prepping more defence, or we take best guesses.”

“I vote we take best guesses,” Gemma said. “If they aren’t thinking about further defence, we don’t want to get them thinking that way.”

“I agree,” Eric nodded.

Sabrina agreed as well, and you quickly went through your motions - there were eight that Eric had put together outside of the motion to dismiss and motion to change venue, but they weren’t all made equal. Five of them you were able to weed out pretty quickly since you’d always known they were a little flimsy. Next went the one about claiming violation of right to a lawyer - it was technically true, but the guy who’d been briefly in custody and demanded a lawyer wasn’t crucial to the opposition’s case and you already had two lines of defence to weed out his testimony on the stand if he got called. That left the Chain of Custody issue where the police had misplaced the keys to the plaintiff’s vehicle for several days while the wreck was impounded, and the Violation of Miranda Rights on one of the other drivers in the crash.

“It’s got to be the Miranda Rights,” Gemma whispered. “The missing keys were found in the wrong evidence bag, yeah, and that’s bad. But the car was still impounded and it doesn’t prove anything. Getting the admission of guilt tossed from the other driver is way bigger and applies more directly.”

The other three of you weren’t so sure, but Gemma was so sure that you sided with her, and that pulled Sabrina in, and Eric followed. That let you focus all four of your minds on making sure your arguments for your motion were tight and controlled. No splashy outburst, no dramatisation, just the facts.

“Alright folks, that’s time,” Judge Mathews called. “Let’s hear it. Plaintiffs counsel, you first.”

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