Off Topic: Send the Laurel to My New Jersey Office.

Good news for the blogosphere: We're back!

Good news for my creditors: The jury returned a verdict for our client yesterday. We won!

It was not a trademark case. (When do those every go to a jury? Not bloody often. And when's the last time your trademark counsel tried a case before a jury, anyway?) No, it was a discrimination case in the federal court in Camden, New Jersey. We represented a female Croatian immigrant who worked in a testing laboratory and who was claiming that she had been disciplined, her pay cut, and that she was ultimately terminated because her black female supervisor had it in for her on grounds of racial, national-origin and gender prejudice.

The jury agreed after a five day trial. They were in their second set of deliberations on the topic of punitive damages, which they had already decided they would award -- they were just working on the number -- when we reached a settlement with the other side so they could avert a final judgment being entered and a potentially much larger judgment, and we would both get our client (and her lawyers) paid now and also avoid post-trial motions, a likely appeal and the distinct possibility of a Chapter 11 filing.

Biggest surprise? The gender thing was key. The most gratifying aspect of that surprise? My partner Nancy Exumé, trying her first ever case as my second-seat (a very active one -- she handled all the cross-examination), insisted that the girl vs. girl angle, of which I was skeptical, be played out -- and she was right. Who sold this to the jury? The two women jurors. They told us so when it was over.

Them: Venus. Us: Mars. Ha! Are you kidding?

Well, anyway, she, Nancy the so-called Venusian and I, Ronco the Martian (the one with the high voice) evidently made a pretty good combination that week in Camden -- which, to make a trademark and branding related point, is the home of Campbell's Soup and nothing else you would want to know about (besides government buildings including the courthouse and its fine inhabitants).

A black Hatian-born female lawyer and a Polish-Cuban Jewish lawyer representing a Croatian chemist in a "reverse discrimination" suit -- and winning. (The other side had a Jew and a blue-eyed Italian as counsel. But hey, we were all Ivy Leaguers!) What a country!

Back to trademarks, blogging, the Internet and all that as soon as possible. I am still decompressing.