Opening Brief for Appellant/Cross-Appellee - Appellate.net

less well-compensated Marjorie Tomes, who was the only Sunrise employee
accused of soliciting CGB’s therapists. Plaintiff’s counsel questioned Sunrise’s
senior officers at length about the exercise of their stock options and about the
amount that Sunrise spent for executives’ personal use of a corporate jet. JA292-
293; JA266-271. Plaintiff’s counsel introduced and emphasized Sunrise’s
corporate financial data – particularly its gross revenues. In his summation,
counsel wove all this irrelevant information into a rousing indictment of Sunrise
for being a large and successful company:
JA426-428.
When you sit here deliberating for $40 and a sandwich
and mileage, they are making $4.1 million [per day].
*** We’re talking about big numbers here because we
think you have to get up in the stratosphere that [Sunrise
officers] fl[y] around in and make [them] understand that
this was wrong. You have to show the other corporate
executives out there in billion dollar companies that you
cannot just squash a little company like an ant and keep
right on rolling. You have to send a message that will be
heard on Wall Street. *** You have to consider the
wealth of the defendants. You also have to consider
compensatory damages, but the Judge will tell you that’s
just one small subset.
Plaintiff’s counsel also repeatedly complained to the jury about how long it
had taken CGB to collect the $109,000 in compensatory damages. He blamed
Sunrise for that delay, arguing that Sunrise had done something wrong by choosing
to defend itself in court. In his opening argument, he told the jury to “look at the
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