C J Campbell wrote:
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:40:10 -0800, jls wrote
(in article .com):


wrote:
A cool thing you might not know:

I got an idea you don't know much.


The NTSB reports are not
admissable (sic) in a brawl like this.

Just as the report of a highway patrol officer or city police officer
is not admissible in a court of law.


Can't cross examine the
NTSB, so they are out.

Not exactly true. If a witness who contributes to a NTSB report
appears and testifies in court, he can be cross-examined just like any
other witness.


Actually, NTSB reports are inadmissible by statute. This came up in a recent
Cessna claim, too, and was reported by both AOPA and the Wall Street Journal.
The idea was that keeping the NTSB out of court would make them more
'independent.' However, as you note, although the report is inadmissible, you
certainly can introduce evidence used in the report. Thus, if NTSB has
witnesses who saw an aircraft buzzing cars, as in the Cessna incident, then
you should be able to subpoena those same witnesses. That Cessna's lawyers
did not do that I can only attribute to gross incompetence.


Leaves the plantiff to make
up anything they can sell to the jury.

Or someone like you to make up a lot of malarkey.


Gotta remember, the goal isn't to find the truth.

That's exactly what juries are for, to find the truth.


BWAHAHAHA! Right. Tell me another one. Juries do a poor job of finding the
truth, and everyone in the legal biz knows it (or should -- but they will not
always admit to it to outsiders).

Ah, then who is to find the truth, you? A judge? An LDS priest?



There are so many spectacular failures of
juries that one cannot even begin to catalog them all.

Name some.


That is some wild ranting if I ever heard it, coming from you even.
You get no credit howling sweeping generalizations. You got one bad
verdict, but it was cleared a bit by a verdict in Santa Monica. The
other one you don't know and weren't there. Give us some more. You
won't, of course. So you can't cite but one bum case to sully all the
rest.


Juries are typically
draw from the most gullible and least informed part of society --
deliberately.

Cite?



Attorneys do not want people who actually know something to
serve on a jury.

Are you calling the American people stupid?

I've seen a few stupid juries, 99% of the ones I've seen are right
smart.



That works great for Lizzie Borden and OJ Simpson, not so
well for aircraft manufacturers and airshow organizers.

Being incapable of getting fire-fighting equipment to the crash permits
a jury to find whether that constituted a failure to use due care by
the fly-in sponsors.
***********************************
In Young v. Young, Ann Eliza Webb Young sued Brigham Young for divorce
in 1873, claiming neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion (CHC
5:442-43). ...Claiming that Young was worth $8 million and had a
monthly income of $40,000, she asked for $1,000 per month pending the
trial, a total of $20,000 for counsel fees, and $200,000 for her
maintenance. Brigham Young denied her charges and claimed to have a
worth of only $600,000 and a monthly income of $6,000. More
fundamentally, he pointed out the inconsistency of granting a divorce
and alimony for a marriage that was not legally recognized." (Zion in
the Courts-A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 1830-1900 by Firmage and Mangrum, 1988, Univ. of Ill. Press,
p.249)

---- what C. J. is still smarting over, explaining some of his
hatred for law and lawyers. Since lawyers came to mormondom, they
have been universally hated. BTW, Eliza and a few of Brigham's other
*57* wives sued and collected. Ah, the perils of statehood.