Trial Lawyers Need Not Apply?

IF you or a loved one needed life-saving surgery, would you choose a surgeon who had only read the textbook, or would you want a doctor who’d performed surgeries?
You’d select a person who hadn’t just mastered the texts, but also had mastered the craft.
Answer this question, then: Why, when it comes to the selection of judges, do we almost routinely say experience doesn’t matter? Trial lawyers, the folks who read the law and then march into a courtroom to try to use what they’ve read to help a real, living, breathing person in need, rarely get to the...
January 13, 2013

Double Standards at CTLA?

I’m not sure why the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association turned on Irving Pinsky the other day. Pinsky filed a claim before the state’s Claim Commissioner seeking permission to sue the state for $100 million on behalf of a survivor of the Newtown shooting. After the world erupted against Pinsky in outrage, CTLA jumped on the bandwagon, issuing a press release suggesting that Pinsky’s timing was all wrong.
What’s this? CTLA as tort reformer?
Pinsky’s claim was admittedly hare-brained. I cannot imagine a conceivable cause of action that would...
January 3, 2013

Jason Zullo's Sentencing Memorandum

Imagine my surprise tonight when a reporter from a local paper sent me an email asking to see a copy of my sentencing memorandum in the Jason Zullo case. I told them I had filed one today, too. They asked for a copy. Can't you get it on-line, I asked?
No, the reporter responded. The Government had emailed a copy to the paper at 6 p.m. So I emailed mine to the paper.
I've never seen the Government quite so desperate to win a case in the papers as this one. It indicted Zullo, an East Haven cop, and charged him with civil rights violations for preying upon Latinos. In the end, the...
January 3, 2013

Wrong Time, Wrong Target In Newtown Suit

Irving Pinsky’s phone has been ringing off the hook. Some callers are wishing him well. But 50 or so folks want him dead, or so they say.
Even his brother and sister lawyers in the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association have turned their backs on him. The New Haven lawyer has become a pariah because he tried to sue the state on behalf of a client’s minor child, a child who went to school one day and then endured the sounds of the slaughter of classmates and teachers over her school’s public address system.
I confess to surprise when I learned that Pinsky had filed a...
January 3, 2013

The Leap From Genes To Minds

December 27, 2012
Discussion turned, in the wake of the Newtown killings, to better mental health services. If we could simply identify homicidal rage before...

Zeitoun and the Rule of Law

December 27, 2012

I spent the other day reading a book my wife gave me for Christmas, Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun. It’s the report of one family’s...

Guns Are Just Like Cigarettes

December 20, 2012
Cigarettes don’t kill people, people do. That would be the tobacco lobby lying to the world. We’d recognize the claim at once as...

The End That Never Comes

December 20, 2012
I am willing to bet that you’ll able to read this come Dec. 22, and thereafter, too, should you be so inclined. That’s because I...

Returning to the State of Nature, One Newtown at a Time

December 17, 2012
Enough, finally, is enough. Your right to bear arms does not yield the right to kill at random. Doesn’t last week’s killing spree at...

Double Standards at the Courthouse Door

December 13, 2012
There’s a new security regime in the Connecticut federal courts, so let me gripe about it a bit: You see, lawyers are now required not just to...

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Taking Back the Courts
Norm Pattis Taking Back the Courts

The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorites movies as a kid. Little did I know judges were so much like the wizard, hiding behind empty trappings of power. This book tells you things you need to know about what really goes on in court. Read it, weep, and then demand that the courts do better.

In the Trenches
Norm Pattis In the Trenches

Plenty of lawyers write about the law, but few who write try cases. Judge for yourself whether I talk the talk and walk the walk in this collection of occasional essays about life in the law's trenches.

Juries and Justice
Norm Pattis Juries and Justice

How prepared are you to take seriously the notion that 'we the people' are, in fact, sovereign? Discover the secret, and unused, power of jurors. 'Ask why; then nullify.'

Norm Pattis

About Norm

Norm Pattis is a Connecticut based trial lawyer focused on high stakes criminal cases and civil right violations. He is a veteran of more than 150 jury trials, many resulting in acquittals for people charged with serious crimes, multi-million dollar civil rights and discrimination verdicts, and scores of cases favorably settled.

© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
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