We recently won a $5 million judgment in a five-week jury trial in Superior Court in Orange County, California. This was a business case for two sophisticated corporate clients. As trial judges like to do, on several occasions during the course of the trial, our judge exhorted both sides outside the presence of the jury to explore settlement. “It’s never too late to settle” he would intone. He continued, “there is an invisible hand at work in this courtroom guiding the jury, and one side or the other could be very disappointed in the result.” Our judge was expressing his faith that a jury is a very powerful being that will inevitably reach the right result not only based on the evidence but also on intangible factors that guide it toward fairness and justice. We didn’t settle because we had faith in our case and our clients had faith in us. We trusted our trial judge and our jury. The jury then rendered its verdict, no doubt guided by the “invisible hand.”

Our judge’s turn of phrase took on clearer shape the evening after the verdict when we received an extraordinary e-mail from our jury foreperson. He explained that he had been too exhausted and emotionally drained following the trial to meet with us but that he now wanted to reach out.