Defendant Choses a New Trial in Minnesota File Sharing Case

When I wrote about the trial judge’s remittitur order in the Jamie Thomas case last week, I didn’t mention that a legal aspect of remittitur is that the defendant may accept it, or reject it and demand a new trial. I now understand that the defendant in this case has not accepted the judge’s remittitur, and has informed the court that she elects instead to proceed with a new trial. This would be the third trial in this case, since the first was set aside by the judge following verdict.  Obviously, this decision is a matter of principle, not finances, since the cost of the new trial alone will likely exceed the damages offered by the judge. However, this case, like the Tenenbaum case in Boston, is all about principle, and very little about hard, cold cash.

There’s an interesting discussion of remittitur on the Copyrights and Campaigns web site, here.