THE LOEWEN GROUP, INC. and RAYMOND L. LOEWEN, v. THE ...

As the United States has shown, it was not until Loewen submitted its numerous post-trial
motions on a variety of matters – fully two weeks after the jury rendered its verdicts and the trial
proceedings were closed – that Loewen first claimed that "plaintiffs repeatedly and
impermissibly interjected issues and matters of race, national origins, class and economic status
into the case . . . ." A729. Even then, this cursory allegation was buried in an 87-page motion
following 70 pages of often tedious and impenetrable arguments about other aspects of the trial,
and was made without the support of even a single example from the record. Under any
standard, this claim was both far too late and far too unspecific to constitute a proper objection.
See, e.g., Barnett v. State, 725 So.2d 797, 801 (Miss. 1998) (objection raised "after the jury has
returned a verdict and been discharged is simply too late."); Oates v. State, 421 So.2d 1025, 1029
(Miss. 1982) ("We have said many times that general objections will not suffice."); Counter-
Mem. at 69 n.41. 41
41 Although the United States has already addressed claimants' contention that Loewen's
proposed jury instruction on "bias" qualifies as an objection (see, e.g., Counter-Mem. at 49-51;
U.S. Jurisdictional Resp. at 86), Mississippi trial lawyer Jack Dunbar discusses this issue in
further detail in his attached supplemental statement (see Tab C hereto). As Mr. Dunbar
explains, Judge Graves did not err in refusing to give the proposed instruction in favor of the
court's more neutral instruction on "bias," to which Loewen did not object. See Supplemental
Dunbar Statement at 8-13. The contrary opinion of claimants' witness, Armis Hawkins, finds no
basis in the actual circumstances of the trial and, indeed, is best seen as an example of the
"typical Hawkinsian Fury" and "hyperbole" for which Mr. Hawkins is well-known among his
colleagues. See Statement of W. Joel Blass ("Blass Statement") at 5-6 (attached at Tab B
hereto). As the actual record makes clear, Loewen never lodged any objection during the casein-chief
alleging any improper appeals to bias – and, in fact, devoted much of its own case to
making such appeals itself. Loewen's proposed instruction, therefore, was either a further effort
to curry sympathy from the jury or, at the very most, a substitute for an objection that came far
too late. See Supplemental Dunbar Statement at 11-12. Even in its post-trial motions, Loewen
offered no argument that the refusal to give the instruction was error (as it did with several other
instructions that were refused), and instead buried the instruction ("D-3") in a final "laundry list"
general assignment of error. See A718-23. Claimants' much-belated effort to give the point
(continued...)
40