The phrase has been around along time and many attorney’s prove it true time after time. Sometimes the old saying “less is more” should be employed.
The phrase “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” was used in a New York Times sports story dated March 5, 1891. A sports reporter of a baseball game was sorely disappointed by the performance of a team named the White Stockings and he wrote:
“The White Stockings yesterday earned their third defeat for the season. They were badly self-whipped, and in this lies their humiliation. Were they fairly defeated after having played a creditable game there would be no censure for them; but when they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory there can be little sympathy for their deserved misfortune.”
This phrase must be ringing in the ears of an attorney who recently had a $900,000 jury award in an employment discrimination case, including $600,000 in punitive damages reversed by a federal appeals court.
The plaintiff, Mindy Gilster, had sued her former employer Sioux City branch of Primebank and her former supervisor alleging that her supervisor spoke to her and touched her in an offense manner. Her employer, the bank reprimanded her supervisor this occurred in 2009 and 2010. However when the Plaintiff had filed with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission in 2011she was fired. What occurred and the firing was the basis of Ms. Gilster lawsuit.
The lawyer for the plaintiff, Brooke Timmer, during closing arguments told jurors about a personal anecdote. She told the jury as a law student she had also been sexually harassed. She was a victim of a professor’s sexual harassment.
In the case of Gilster v. Primebank the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. District Court of Appeal in its opinion stated “counsel’s recounting of her personal experience — facts that were not in evidence — was aimed at enhancing her client’s credibility by telling the jury that counsel, too, had endured similar misconduct.” The Court held these remarks were improper and unfair. The Court went on to say “Having carefully reviewed the entire trial record, we are left with the firm conviction that the timing and emotional nature of counsel’s improper and repeated personal vouching for her client, using direct references to facts not in evidence, combined with the critical importance of Gilster’s credibility to issues of both liability and damages, made the improper comments unfairly prejudicial and require that we remand for a new trial. This is not an action we take lightly, for it means that Gilster is deprived of a favorable jury verdict, and that all the witnesses may need to endure again what was surely a stressful, unpleasant trial. However, as we said many years ago in an opinion that has been frequently cited by other courts, “when a lawyer departs from the path of legitimate argument, [s]he does so at [her] own peril and that of[her] client.” Kelly, 84F.2dat 573.” ”
The Court went futher and stated:
“In our view, counsel’s rebuttal argument included numerous comments that clearly violated the following provisions in Rule 32:3.4 of the Iowa Rules of ProfessionalConduct, titled Fairness to OpposingPartyand Counsel:
A lawyer shall not . . . in trial, allude to any matter . . . that will not be supported by admissible evidence, assert personal knowledge of facts in issue except when testifying as a witness, or state a personal opinion as to the justness of a cause, the credibility of a witness, [or] the culpability ofa civil litigant . . . .” ”
The Des Moines Register in an article written on April 7, 2014 by Grant Rodgers entitled “Iowa Lawyer’s Harassment Story Found Improper for Jurors” reported that since Gilster’s trial, Ms. Timmer has stopped using the anecdote in closing arguments.
Winning cases at trial, whether it be a wrongful termination claim, personal injury or medical malpractice is a challenge under the best of circumstances. The same applies to law and motion. It is important to keep in mind what one argues, sometimes less is more . To “Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory” is truly a trial attorney’s nightmare. Such an experience is not only a painful experience but as here can mean “rolling the dice all over again.” Not a great place to be.