Courts

Attorney Posts About Case On Social Media, So Judge Vacates The Jury Verdict

Attorney learns the hard way social media posts can bite you in the butt.

social mediaPlaintiffs counsel Mike Rafi and Alex Brown of the Rafi Law Firm secured a $1.5 million verdict for their client in an automotive tort case. But rather than pop the bubbly in celebration, they have to prep for a retrial.

Gwinnett County, Georgia State Court Judge Ronda S. Colvin vacated the jury verdict and set a date for a new trial. The reason for this extraordinary step? Rafi made a series of social media posts — including gems like Three Lies We Tell Jurors and updates on the tort case that Colvin said “went well beyond just a ‘matter of general public concern.’”

As reported by Law.com, in granting the new trial, Colvin was aware of the competing interests she had to weigh:

In a six-page order, Colvin wrote she’d been “hesitant to overturn the jury’s verdict,” noting that “a violation of Rule 3.6 alone is not a proper vehicle to obtain a new trial.”

However, Colvin concluded that, as part of the court’s duty “to protect the integrity of the judicial process,” she held “broad discretion in ensuring that no verdict is contrary to the principles of justice and equity.”

In addressing Rafi’s social media posts, Colvin deemed it “difficult to find the balance between protecting the right to a fair trial with the rights of free speech and free expression.”

But ultimately, Colvin found the potential impact of Rafi’s posts was just too great. “The court is deeply concerned with the impact of Rafi’s social media videos. These videos contained sufficient specificity to determine that he was beginning a jury trial in Gwinnett County on the following Monday,” Colvin wrote. “His first video specifically also set out that the defendant had insurance, that the defendant’s insurance carrier paid for his high-priced witnesses, that ‘she’ [the defendant] had been arrested at the scene of the accident and that the defendant had offered to settle this case, thus recognizing that she was at fault.”

This led Judge Colvin to use her judicial discretion to grant defendant’s motion for a new trial “in its entirety.” Hopefully, Rafi will be able to resist posting about the new trial on social media.


Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. 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 or Mastodon @[email protected].