A Victory for Justice

Congratulations to TLC Faculty Member and 2002 alumni, Andy Vickery, for a receiving a plaintiff's verdict for his clients in a negligence case against a pharmaceutical company that knew people were dying from an undiagnosed side effect of their medication, but failed to take reasonable steps to help the doctors diagnose and treat it. 

The first victory of hopefully many, they have about 15 other cases against the company in the same court - the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois. 

In an excerpt of his Closing Argument, Andy shared great insight into the principle and foundation of a jury's role in this (and every) trial:
"In fact, you know, lawyers -- I've been doing this 40 years, and one of the things you do is you make little seating charts, and you say, well, I want to remember what this person seemed to be interested in. And you all blew it out of the way. You sit wherever you want to. Every time you go back, you come back and about half of you sit in a different place, and that's fine. And you notice what else happens every time you go out and every time come back? We stand. We stand when you go out and we stand when you come back. Even Judge Haddad stands when you go out and when you come back.

"Why? Because we've summoned you to do something, we summoned you from your ordinary lives to do something on behalf of society that is nothing short of heroic. It is a heroic quest for truth and for justice, not just for Delores, but for every other person who takes Humira, for every other doctor who struggles to diagnose a disease. Because we've only seen the tip of the iceberg, folks. Those 16 cases that were reported, it's at least 160 real people; if there were really 36, it is at least 360, and it could be ten times that much.

"We've only seen the tip of the iceberg. And so you're summoned because society -- I mean, this goes back to 1776. This goes back to the Framers. And thank you for the Law Day, your Honor. Thank you. It made me proud to be a lawyer, Francis Scott Key was a lawyer. The Framers said that the guardians of justice, the people that discern the truth, that listen to it all and decide to sort the wheat from the chaff and who forge justice out of a situation, are people just like you, summoned from ordinary life to do that. And then, when your job is done, you're gone. You're not like a politician running for reelection or anything else.  You do the most important civic duty in America and you do it well and then you're gone. And I thank you for it. I thank you for it."

For the complete transcript of Andy's winning Closing Argument, alumni may visit our password protected Alumni Archive page here.