The empty chair verdict

A jury just returned a $104 million verdict against a company that never showed up to defend itself. No answer, no lawyer, nobody at the defense table. The court had already entered a default, so Tad Thomas could have let a judge set the damages that afternoon and been done.

He put it in front of twelve strangers instead. The defendant was Husky Armory, the online seller that shipped an eighteen-year-old the ghost gun kit he used to end his life. It is believed to be the largest verdict ever against a gun seller, and Thomas may never collect a dollar of it. He knew that going in.

Most lawyers would have taken the judge's number and gone home. Here is why he didn't, and why you want to know how before a case like it lands on your desk.

A jury says something a judge cannot

Put a judge on the damages and you get a line on an order. Put twelve people on it and you get a verdict, and a verdict is a statement a community signs its name to.

That distinction is tactical, not sentimental. Thomas wanted the other operators still out there to see this number and run the math on their own exposure. A judge's figure is administrative. A jury's figure is twelve neighbors saying, out loud and on the record, that the conduct was worth punishing. The proof it landed came fast. The verdict dropped on a Wednesday, the press conference was Thursday, and by that afternoon the company's website had gone dark. The check didn't pull the site down. Twelve neighbors saying out loud what Husky Armory was did that.

Try it like someone is going to appeal

A default trial tempts you to relax, because no one is there to object. That is exactly how you hand an absent defendant his reversal. Thomas tried this one like the table was full. Disciplined questions, arguments kept inside the lines, every move made for the appellate judge he assumed would one day read the transcript looking for a reason to undo the whole thing.

He could afford that restraint because the defendant had built the case against itself. Husky Armory advertised operating with no license, no background check, and no serial number, and it posted memes mocking the ATF. When the other side has published your closing argument for you, the job is simple. You get out of the way and let the jury read it.

The client was not chasing a check

Laura Herp did not bring this case for the money. She is a clinical social worker who watched a new mental health crisis take her son Henry, an eighteen-year-old she was fighting to save with counselors and psychiatrists and time. After he died she found the receipt in his email, learned what the company was, and decided that if she could not save her own son she would make it harder for the next company to take somebody else's.

That client does not need you to win money. She needs you to build a record. And building a record when a judge would be faster, on a judgment you may never collect, is a different kind of case than the one that pays the bills. Learn how to try it, because every so often a case like this walks in your door.

How do you build a $104 million punitive case with no defendant in the room? I walked through the whole trial with Tad Thomas.

Reply and tell me about the case you took that was never about the money. I read every one.

One more thing

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you already met the small person in my house whose main hobby is closing my laptop.

She is four now. She waits for the exact moment I look busy, sidles over, gently (or not so gently) shuts the lid, and looks up like, and now we tickle.

Wild to think that a few years ago she was six months old and staring at those same screens in total awe, like each one was a spaceship. All those glowing screens. Daddy's magic command center.

Now she knows better. She has decided the best thing the computer does is close. She is not wrong.

It is hard to keep working when someone wants your attention that badly. Working from home for Eve is a blessing, and I do not want to miss the season where she actually wants to be around me. Apparently it ends. Everyone tells me it ends fast.

I put the stuff that does not fit here, surfing, pickleball, the occasional rant, over on LinkedIn. If you want the version of me that closes the laptop, come find me there. In fact, I'd love to know what you guys actually want to read and where you go for news. Do me a solid and take this 5-minute survey. Thanks in advance.

~ Adam

Quote of the week:

“This is why I do it. Not for the headlines. For the people on the other end of the phone who are scared, in pain, and don't know what's going to happen next.”

- R. Mack Babcock, on 24 years of workers' compensation law