Cost of Judge’s Gifts to Jurors and Plaintiff Is New Trial
A judge who gave holiday gifts to jurors and candy to the 4-year-old plaintiff denied a fair trial to the defense, according to a New York state appeals court.
The court ordered a new trial before a different judge in the medical malpractice case because of the cumulative effect of trial conduct by Judge Bernadette Bayne, the New York Law Journal reports.
The court said Bayne presented the brain-damaged plaintiff with a box of candy in front of the jury, and gave a present to each juror before a holiday break. She also “demonstrated a propensity to admonish the defense counsel at a substantially more frequent rate than she did the plaintiffs’ counsel” and gave the plaintiffs’ lawyer more leeway to cross-examine witnesses and make extraneous comments, according to the opinion.
She also erred by relying on juror affidavits taken more than a week after their initial $600,000 verdict to rule they had intended the amount to be an annual award, the court said. Bayne increased the verdict to $21.1 million but later agreed to reduce it to $14 million.
It’s not the first time Bayne has generated controversy, according to the New York Law Journal story. Brooklyn legal aid lawyers boycotted her courtroom after she ordered a legal aid lawyer to be handcuffed to a bench for 20 minutes.
