Clermont, FL Personal Injury Law Firms & Lawyers

You need to retain counsel immediately and report this lawsuit to your inusrance company so they can appoint counsel for you if at all possible. Jerking around with a summons is a weak means of defending the case. 

Any jury verdict can be appealed including those based on a "question of fact." The real question should be whether the appellate court would reverse a jury verdict on this basis. The answer to this second question is that if the only issue being appealed is that a different jury could have reached a different conclusion then it is very unlikely that the appellate court would reverse the verdict. In most cases to win an appeal there must be some other basis for reversal other than a claim that the jury got it wrong. Some examples in which a case could be reversed on appeal include, but are not limited to: irregularity in the proceedings of the court, jury or prevailing party or any order of the court or referee or abuse of discretion by which the party was prevented from having a fair trial; misconduct of the jury or prevailing party; accident or surprise, which ordinary prudence could not have guarded against; (4) excessive damages, appearing to have been given under the influence of passion or prejudice; that the verdict, report, or decision is not sustained by sufficient evidence or is contrary to law; error of law occurring at the trial and objected to by the losing party. I do not understand what you are asking by your second question, "If so, what consequences might the legal system experience?" Although there are some cases in which judges decide the facts, such as workers' compensation cases, basically our justice system is set up so that juries, rather than judges, decide the facts in a case. If appellate courts routinely reversed jury verdicts when the only issue is that the appellate judges just thought the jury got it wrong we would effectively be dismantling the jury system as we know it. Jury verdicts would be less meaningful.