I guess it could be looked at as the plaintiff being hand-picked, given that there are thousands of lawsuits for which the legal team who represented this plaintiff could have chosen from. It takes a lot of money to go up against Monsanto in court, and even if you win at trial, you can still lose on appeal and never get paid. "Test" cases like this are often funded by special interest groups, in this case environmental groups I would presume, and they don't want to waste all that money on the wrong case. They needed to be in California, from what I read, because the state has a law that fast-tracks lawsuits for dying plaintiffs. Beyond that, they pick the case with the fact pattern most likely to succeed with the jury - the plaintiff here was a poor working man, just trying to do his job to support his family, and now he is dying of a horrible disease. That tugs at anyone's heart strings.
I don't mean to sound like I am on one particular side of a controversial issue; I'm really not. My point is that cases like this are more about larger battles between very powerful opposing forces. The particular plaintiffs involved are used as pawns in that regard. Whether that is good or bad is a matter of opinion.
|