Finance Committee - 9/6/2017 Page 10
bullet but this is just one other way of approaching it. In addition to the financial way, it does change behavior.
| sound like a lawyer when | said that.
Alderman Cookson
| certainly don’t know if this question is premature but could you indicated whether you expect this to be a trial
by jury or is this a decision that the court would make itself?
Attorney Vogelman
No we make that decision and we’ve asked for a trial by jury. If at some point down the line there’s a collective
belief that we do better before a Judge, in New Hampshire and State Court, both sides have to agree. We
have to ask for the trial by jury and so either side can ask for it and then it’s set down for a jury trial. For it to
change to a trial by judge, everybody has to agree. This is hyper technical and maybe depending on the judge
we get, we’d rather have a judge but that is way down the line. We’ve asked for — on the front page of the
complaint it says jury trial request.
Alderman Cookson
And what’s the expectation for mediation? I’m assuming there’s that opportunity prior to it going to trial.
Attorney Vogelman
New Hampshire has one of the most aggressive mediation procedures in the country. Basically unless you
come up with a good reason not to, you’ve got to mediate every case. We are years away from that. What
happens sometimes in cases like this, they do a test case. They pick one court somewhere in the country and
they try it to get an idea of what juries are thinking about it and then bang, bang, bang everybody sits down and
they settle. Imagine and listen to the bad publicity. Their lawyers don’t work on a contingency basis. The
firms that they’re hiring at billing out at $700 - $800 an hour. So this is expensive for them. At some point they
kind of see the light and say we’d rather sit down and throw money at some of the plaintiffs. They'll do that and
there is a culture here in New Hampshire of mediating almost everything.
Alderman Cookson
Thank you.
Alderman Clemons
Now this is a real technical question but this is more on the city side more than anything else actually. | would
assume that this would probably come down to a settlement is what | would guess. Assuming that part of the
settlement has the city agreeing to spending money on like the tobacco lawsuit you have to spend money on
education and things like that. Assuming that an agreement like that has come to if the city takes in a lump of
| don’t know $10 million let’s say, are we able to spend it under our rules of the spending cap or are we just
going to put it into the bank account and let it sit there?
Attorney Bolton
Well certainly if we (inaudible) Board of Aldermen agreeing to some settlement which has terms on how we
spend a portion of those proceeds, we’re going to have to develop a mechanism by which we comply with that
settlement. If we can’t develop such a mechanism, obviously the Board of Aldermen whoever it is when and if
this comes to fruition will have to vote not to include such terms. If we’re firm, the $10 million might still be
available because after all the pharmaceutical company doesn’t really care about us providing education or
not. Or they may Say if you’re not going to this, we'll only give you $9.5 million or whatever the number would
be. That would be a decision the Board of Alderman would have to deal with at that point in time.
