Last year, plaintiffs attorneys David Horan and Burton Newman asked Madison County Circuit Court Judge Andreas Matoesian to order the parties in a case they were litigating before him not to contact or cooperate with the media or “act in a manner to instigate media coverage.”
Coverage of the lawsuit had been “favorable to the defendants and negative to the plaintiffs,” they complained.
“The published stories risk polluting the potential jury pool in Madison County and prevent the plaintiffs from obtaining a fair trial of this matter,” they warned. “The merits of this case should be determined as prescribed by law -- by a jury -- unsullied by biased (and orchestrated) media reports.”
This is the same David Horan who basked in publicity 10 years ago while helping win a record multibillion judgment against cig bigwig Philip Morris. Suddenly, he was reticent.
Judge Matoesian didn’t buy the blarney and denied the request.
You see, the reason that media coverage of the case had been “favorable to the defendants and negative to the plaintiffs” was that it wasn’t much of a case.
Instead of rolling over, the defendant fought back. Last week, “polluted” or not, a jury vindicated him, returning their verdict in three hours.
They found no reason to believe that Dr. Bruce Vest of the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Clinic in Alton had contributed in any way to the unfortunate death of Tamara Kay Greco in 2004.
Greco, a legal secretary employed by Alton plaintiffs attorney Steve Selby, visited Dr. Vest the day after spraining her ankle. She died a week later from bilateral pulmonary thromboemboli.
Two years after her death, her husband, James Greco, filed suit against Dr. Vest, later dropped the suit, and then filed it again.
At the time of her death, Tamara Greco stood 5’4”, weighed 230 pounds.