Wylder
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Legal Newsline) - Fourth District appellate judges who rejected a verdict in an asbestos conspiracy trial defended Honeywell and Pneumo-Abex better than the companies defended themselves, losing lawyer James Wylder complains.
On Aug. 5, he petitioned the Fourth District to reconsider a July 15 decision overruling two precedents that have sustained his unique series of trials in McLean County.
"The majority's effort to overturn the verdict of the jury by raising arguments neither presented nor preserved by the defendants is contrary to principles of appellate review," he wrote.
"The risk when an appellate court conducts its own search, or makes its own factual determinations, is that the court does not know the record in the same way the parties know it," he wrote.
Wylder told Fourth District judges they drew inferences and made arguments that defendants didn't present to them or to the jury.
He challenged their finding that expert witness Barry Castleman lacked qualifications to testify about the significance of experiments with mice.
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