Godfrey | Johnson Wins Securities Fraud Jury Trial

December 19, 2015

Ft. Collins, Colorado. At the close of a two-week jury trial, Brett Godfrey obtained a defense verdict on all claims against a Wyoming corporation known as In-Situ, Inc., which manufactures the world’s most advanced water quality monitoring equipment.

The suit was brought against the corporation by its former CEO, who alleged that he had been misled in connection with a stock option plan under which he had accrued more than 50,000 options to purchase company stock. The plaintiff sought more than $3 million in damages.

“We were able to provide a comprehensive presentation to educate the jury on complex business and finance issues,” said Brett Godfrey after the verdict. “We are happy that this important client was totally vindicated by the outcome of this trial.”

During the trial, the jury was provided with hundreds of exhibits, including business records, financial summaries, correspondence and other documents. Godfrey | Johnson’s attorneys employed state-of-the-art courtroom technology tools to simplify the case—even to select the jury. Lead trial counsel Brett Godfrey tried the entire case using two iPads and a host of other equipment rather than relying upon cumbersome heaps of paper loaded into notebooks or folders. “Speed of access is a real key to holding the jury’s attention in a complex trial,” Godfrey said. “The ability to instantly find whatever is needed is a must in commercial litigation. We couldn’t have tried this case the way we did without our advanced technology.”

The defense presented testimony from corporate valuation experts and industry experts regarding the core business technologies that were the driving influences behind the corporation’s decisions in order to establish that the corporation had operated properly at every juncture. From the standpoint of using technology to manage the complicated issues and vast amount of evidence, the Godfrey | Johnson team set up its own private WiFi network in the courtroom to link iPads and computers to projection screens, allowing instant display of any page or paragraph from among thousands of pages of exhibits. Instantaneous split-screen imagery permitted comparison of documents and deposition testimony with the contents of records.