More than four years after Atlanta attorney Don Keenan led a team that netted a $6.6 million judgment for a woman savagely raped in a Boston Radisson hotel parking garage in 2009, the Massachusetts Appeals Court threw out a challenge and reinstated the verdict.

The defense asked for a new trial, arguing Keenan’s presentation improperly played on jurors’ emotions. Keenan is the co-author, with trial consultant David Ball, of “Reptile: The Manual of the Plaintiffs’ Revolution,” a how-to book for lawyers to get into jurors’ “reptile brains” by appealing to their basic fears and instinct for self-preservation.