View Eighth Circuit Opinion and District Court Order:

March 2, 2010 Eighth Circuit Opinion (PDF)
June 23, 2009 District Court Order Granting Summary Judgment (PDF)

The trial in El Paso, Texas started on January 25, 2010.  Dowd Bennett attorneys Jim Bennett, Megan Heinsz and Jennifer Aspinall worked on the case with a team of attorneys and handled, among other items, jury selection, opening statement, examination of multiple witnesses, and closing argument.  The trial was reported to be the longest civil case tried to verdict in that district in the past decade.  The jury returned its verdict less than 45 minutes after it started deliberations.  Post trial motions are expected to be filed.

View Verdict Form:

February 25, 2010 Verdict Form U.S. ex rel. Gonzalez v. FMC et al. (PDF)

Related Link:

www.superlawyers.com

View Appellate Court Decision Affirming Dismissal and Original District Court Order of Dismissal:

February 10, 2010 Appellate Decision Affirming Dismissal by District Court (PDF)
April 15, 2009 District Court Order of Dismissal and Memorandum Opinion (PDF)

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
By Bill McClellan

New York City does not want the Sept. 11 terrorism trials. St. Louis should volunteer for them.

We have a brand new federal courthouse. The city has a brand new jail just a couple of blocks away. Surely, something could be worked out.

What would St. Louis get? Two things we always want — publicity and money. Tons of publicity. Millions and millions of federal dollars.

I am not suggesting we let New York use St. Louis as a venue for New York lawyers to try the cases. I am suggesting St. Louis take over the trial.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri is a first-class organization. It never seems to have the scandals and problems that periodically plague the U.S. attorney’s office across the river or the one in Kansas City. Why is that? Have we just been lucky in the people who have been appointed to head the office over the years? 

Maybe that’s some of it, but I think there is a sense of professionalism in the office. We have a bunch of career prosecutors who are good at what they do. Some of the best prosecutors work on drug cases. I think the War on Drugs could be scaled back for a while while we turn that prosecutorial expertise toward terrorism.

There are people who argue that we ought not try terrorists in the criminal justice system. These people say we will just be giving the terrorists an opportunity to push their radical views.

But consider the recent case in Wichita in which “pro-life” activist Scott Roeder went on trial for the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who performed late-term abortions. Roeder testified in his own defense, but he was not allowed to prattle on indefinitely about his religious beliefs. He was on the stand for less than a day.

Judges can control that sort of thing.

“Mr. Khalid, this case is not about your ideological or religious beliefs. The question before this court is whether you had a hand in the attacks of September 2001. That is all we’re going to consider.”

I think part of the problem is the hangover from the O.J. Simpson case. Judge Lance Ito never took control of that case and it meandered on for nine long months. In St. Louis, it would have been over in two weeks, maybe less.

In fact, I’ve written about murder cases that were over in a day.

That’s the way the terror trials should be. Two or three weeks max. We need a judge who will move things along.

I suggest we bring Stephen Limbaugh back to the bench. He spent 25 years as a federal judge before having to retire in July 2008 when his son was appointed to the federal bench. He’s a well-respected, thoughtful man and he will not tolerate harangues from the witness stand.

We are also going to need somebody to organize things. That’s because there will be some cross-jurisdictional issues here. For instance, we will probably want to use the city’s new Justice Center. It’s close to the federal court.

Let’s put former U.S. Sen. Jack Danforth in charge. He ran the Waco investigation. To give this effort a bipartisan flavor, we’ll make prominent Democrat and former U.S. Attorney Ed Dowd his assistant. Dowd assisted Danforth in the Waco investigation, so we know the two can work together.

Many things will have to be worked out. The federal government will give us hundreds of millions of dollars for these trials, and some of that is going to have to go for security.

I am not sure how to handle that. The St. Louis police department has its hands full with its regular workload. Besides, the current police board seems dysfunctional and the chief is secretive — he seems to run the department like a private agency — and I’m not sure we’d want to entrust millions of dollars to them. Actually, I am sure, and we wouldn’t.

So I’ll let Danforth and Dowd figure out the security. They just have to understand that the city needs to be able to pocket a good chunk of that federal money. After all, that’s part of the reason we’re hosting these trials. St. Louis needs money.

The other reason, of course, is publicity. We’re always getting overlooked. Last month, we learned we didn’t make the cut to have a soccer game if the U.S. hosts the 2018 or 2022 World Cup. Eighteen cities were selected as potential sites, and we weren’t one of them. We used to own soccer. Of course, we’ll never host a Super Bowl.

But the eyes of the world would be on St. Louis if we hosted the terror trials. And you know who would stand out?

The solid, no-nonsense, Midwestern jurors who would listen to the evidence, ignore any theatrics and calmly do the right thing, whatever the right thing might be.


Best Lawyers, which is published by Woodward/White, has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 32,000 leading attorneys cast almost two million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their practice areas, and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

It is important to note that the lawyers listed in Best Lawyers have no say in deciding which practice areas they are included in. They are voted into practice areas entirely as a result of the votes they receive from their peers. The subspecialties listed after their names are based on information from a variety of sources.

St. Louis Magazine publishes the portions of the Best Lawyers that are relevant to the St. Louis region to spotlight those attorneys that are deemed exceptional by their legal colleagues. Inclusion among the Best Lawyers means that the attorneys’ local peers have deemed them to be especially bright lights in St. Louis’ impressive legal community.

Related Links:

www.bestlawyers.com
www.stlmag.com/media/St-Louis-Magazine/February-2010/Best-Lawyers-reg-2010/

View District Court Order and Appellate Court Judgment:

January 26, 2010 Court of Appeals Judgment Affirming Dismissal (PDF)
November 13, 2008 District Court Order of Dismissal and Memorandum Opinion (PDF)

On November 19, 2009, the St. Louis Business Journal chose its 2010 40 Under 40 award winners. One of Dowd Bennett’s own, John Comerford, received the honor.

The honorees — all younger than 40 — were chosen by a panel of Business Journal editors and former winners based on career achievements and community work. A record number of nominations were received for this year’s awards.

The winners will be honored at an awards dinner Thursday, Feb. 11, at Palladium Saint Louis, 1400 Park Place.

John Comerford
Dowd Bennett LLP, attorney
College: U.S. Naval Academy, bachelor’s in English; Georgetown University, J.D.

It was nearly a decade ago when John Comerford was on a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane that collided with a Chinese jet and was forced to land in China. Comerford and the crew were held for 11 days. By comparison, taking on a legal battle against the state of Missouri and winning was hardly nerve rattling.

Last summer Comerford sued the state when it tried to eliminate three administrative law judges by cutting their budgets.

It was a bonus when the court awarded nearly $40,000 in attorneys fees, something Ed Dowd Jr., who hired Comerford at the 11-attorney Dowd Bennett firm, said he had not expected.

View Opinions of the Delaware Supreme Court and Delaware Chancery Court:

December 15, 2009 Delaware Supreme Court Affirming Chancery Court Judgment (PDF)
May 13, 2009 Memorandum Opinion of the Delaware Chancery Court (PDF)

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A federal judge has rejected a Springfield woman’s claim that her monkey was a service animal and that she was disabled.

Debby Rose had sued the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, CoxHealth hospital and a Springfield Wal-Mart because she was not allowed to take the monkey, named Richard, into restaurants and other businesses.

The Springfield News-Leader reported that Rose claimed she was covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act because she suffered from anxiety and agoraphobia. She said she needed Richard to calm her.

But federal Judge Richard Dorr ruled Thursday that the monkey was not a service animal and that Rose was not disabled.

The judge noted that Rose was able to marry three times, raise six children and work several jobs despite claiming to suffer from the disabilities since the 1970s.