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With The Trial Wire, CVN moves beyond news of trials it webcasts to share the best stories of other significant litigation across the country. 

A metro Atlanta political consultant’s $11-plus million verdict against two men he claimed destroyed his reputation may be an incomplete victory, given questions of improper service on one of the men and the fact that neither defendant showed for trial, leaving an empty defense table facing jurors, according to a story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. 

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Missouri juries have awarded $127 million in state talc-cancer cases this year, with more potentially to come, while New Jersey, a hotbed of talc-cancer litigation itself, recently threw out two similar cases. Why the disparity? According to a legal expert interviewed in a recent Forbes article, it may be fundamental differences in expert witness admissibility.

Despite a mountain of evidence and days of testimony, a courtroom gallery can catch its collective breath or a verdict can turn with a single powerful moment in a lawyer's closing or an intense back-and-forth with a key witness. Three of the most memorable moments in CVN's trials last month include: 

Safety procedures used by a steel manufacturing giant played a central role at the 2015 trial over the death of a 24-year-old electrical worker, and Conley Griggs & Partin's Cale Conley opened the proceeding with a powerful list of ways he believed the steel company could have prevented the deadly accident. Lanier v. Gerdau Ameristeel.