The August issue of the Mississippi Jury Verdict Reporter arrived earlier this week. Here is MJVR’s preview of the issue, which contains a summary of the reported verdicts.

The issue includes reports on:

• the June $2.3 million Pearl River County verdict that I reported here;
• the May $750,000 Hinds County nursing home verdict that I reported here and here;
• the June $1.1 million Hinds County bench trial verdict that I reported here; and
• several verdicts that were either defense verdicts or small plaintiff verdicts probably considered defense wins.

As usual, the big plaintiff wins were previously reported. Defense verdicts and small plaintiff verdicts usually were not previously reported. MJVR does a great job of exposing defense wins.

If you removed Hinds and Jones counties from the equation, defense win rates in Mississippi trials would be staggering.

One interesting verdict reported was a July $500,000 punitive damages verdict on the re-trial of a Jones County case that was reversed and remanded by the Mississippi Court of Appeals. In the original trial the trial court applied a preponderance of evidence standard in the punitives phase. The jury awarded $200,000 in punitive damages.

In the re-trial, the trial court applied the correct clear and convincing evidence standard. The jury awarded $500,000 in punitive damages. I guess the defendant won the battle on appeal and ended up losing the war.

You hear about cases where defendants choose to pay judgments rather than appeal because they believe that there could be a bigger verdict in a second trial. This case is an example of that possibility.