At New York Legal Update, there’s a discussion of Rivera v City of New York, where the Appellate Division, First Department tossed the malicious prosecution case that resulted first in a verdict of $81 Million, reduced by the trial judge to $635,000.  Now it’s gone.

So far, that’s life.  But the decision contains a curiosity:

Any rational person, objectively looking at the video and reviewing the other evidence, would find the police more than justified in their concern that this episode might escalate into violence.

So let’s play that out.  One jury and a judge found that the plaintiff’s should win, though they differed on the numbers.  Now the Appellate Division says any rational person would think otherwise.  So if no rational person could disagree with the conclusion of the appeals panel, what does that say about the good folks on the jury and the trial judge? 

The answer isn’t to send over the wagons from Bellevue.  The answer is another bout of hyperbole by the appellate court, overstating their position to make it more forceful and clear.  Unfortunately, it also makes it lacking in intellectual integrity by its failure to state its position in language that honestly reflects this de novo review of the facts. 

This trend of appellate courts writing in language that reinvents the facts in a way that suggests that everyone who would think otherwise is a blithering idiot or insane really doesn’t help to clarify much of anything or lend credence to the Court’s decisions.  It is, on the other hand, demeaning to a whole bunch of people who didn’t ask to be there and to one person who actually had to sit through the evidence.