The Federal Courtroom At The Center Of A COVID Outbreak

Trials are dangerous in the time of COVID.

A mistrial in a federal case isn’t usually news, I mean, maybe if it’s in some notorious crime family case like in the movies, but in the majority of civil cases, these things happen without too much fanfare. But, well, when COVID-19 shuts down your case well, that’s news.

An Eastern District of Texas breach of contract case between plaintiff ResMan LLC and defendant Karya Property Management LLC and presided over by Amos L. Mazzant II has been sidelined by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, as reported by Law360. How bad is the outbreak? Well, at most recent count 13 people. Yikes:

David O’Toole, clerk for the Eastern District of Texas, told Law360 on Tuesday that the number of trial participants who tested positive for coronavirus had increased from at least seven on Friday to 13 confirmed positives Tuesday. The positive cases include two jurors, at least three members of the defense team, a “handful of folks” on the plaintiff’s team, and three or four court staffers.

The outbreak occurred after testimony in the trial had begun:

Jury selection was held on Nov. 2 and the trial was scheduled to last for two weeks. Jurors heard testimony every day last week and on Nov. 9, according to court records.

After lunch on Nov. 9, the judge advised the jurors and attorneys that a juror who had recently been excused tested positive for the coronavirus.

The judge then suspended the trial and asked participants to get tested and provide the court with results as soon as they were received. The judge advised participants to consult with their physicians about self-quarantining.

As a result there are only five jurors currently willing to continue with the trial, and the defendants aren’t willing to move forward with less than six jurors, so… yeah, Judge Mazzant declared a mistrial.

Judge Mazzant noted that this particular case seems to be an outlier — though that’s the thing about COVID: it doesn’t care how many times you did a thing in the past, getting folks together inside is a risk, every, single time:

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“I apologize for all this happening,” the judge said. “We’ve done, again, seven trials without any incident, and the district, I think, has done about 20 trials without any incident, and we had issues this time.”

In announcing the mistrial, Mazzant also said that no trials will start in the remaining part of 2020:

“I’m not doing any more jury trials between now and December,” he said. “We are planning on resuming, assuming what the numbers look like, in January.”

Hopefully by then Texas will have the virus (slightly) more under control. Our best wishes to everyone impacted on their COVID recovery.


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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).