More than a year after best-selling author Patricia Cornwell won a $50.9 million jury verdict against her financial advisers, Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin has persuaded the trial judge that a do-over is required. But Cornwell’s lawyer, Joan Lukey of Ropes & Gray, isn’t ready to declare the verdict lost.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole in Boston vacated the verdict in an 11-page ruling issued on Tuesday. O’Toole, who presided over the 26-day trial back in early 2013, concluded that defendant Anchin Block & Anchin was entitled to judgment as a matter of law on some of Cornwell’s claims of negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract. The verdict “makes it impossible to tease out the jury’s findings as to individual issues or claims,” so a new trial on all remaining claims is needed, the judge wrote.
