First Circuit Judge Ronald Wilson tried to be reasonable. Overseeing multiple asbestos suits with multiple defendants, he implored plaintiff firms to settle lung cancer cases and get the numbers down.
“Bottom line: there is no way I can mediate these cases with the vast number of defendants,” Wilson lamented earlier this year.
“I assumed that with the importance of the mesothelioma cases and the always possibility of an extended meso trial that you would be making every effort to settle your lung cancer cases prior to the start of the mesothelioma trial,” Wilson wrote.
“I further assumed that because you would make those settlement efforts that on February 6, I would be attempting to encourage settlement in a reasonable number of cases – perhaps 20 or 30.”
That didn’t happen. To make matters worse, along came COVID-19 and the demands of social distancing. Now there are too many cases, too many defendants, and not enough space to accommodate them.
The trial, scheduled to begin this week, has been moved from the Ohio County Courthouse to the Highlands Event Center in Wheeling, and the urgency of settling has increased – as what looms is “a dreadful experience,” Judge Wilson predicted.
“If you have filed motions for summary judgments or a continuance, you may assume they have been denied,” he wrote in a pretrial notice to participants. “I have had to pick and choose motions that I thought had to be ruled on prior to trial.”
Wilson emphasized that “a trial with everyone wearing masks and jurors, attorneys, clients, witnesses, and the judge all separated by six feet with the judge, the attorneys, and the witness trying to communicate is a dreadful experience. If you’re going to settle, do it now and avoid this dreadful experience.”
Waxing biblical, Wilson warned that “those who abuse the liberal civil procedure for suing questionable defendants, accusing them of causing personal injury to their clients when the evidence of their liability amounts to a mere gamble in a lawsuit,” will “reap what you sow.”
As they should.