POST-TRIAL MOTIONS

In the movies, trials end with the decision of the jury about an hour after they begin. In real life, cases take much longer to resolve. Even after the jury has spoken, litigants may file certain "post-trial motions" designed to grab victory out of the jaws of defeat, to persuade the judge to order a new trial, or to modify the result in some less drastic way. In most court systems, within ten days of the entry of an adverse judgment, a party may file the following motions:

I. Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict - in this motion, the losing litigant argues that the jury’s verdict was so unreasonable that it should be reversed in its entirety with judgment entered in his favor. Considering the drastic nature of this request, courts rarely grant what lawyers call "JNOV" motions.

II. Motion for New Trial - often added as an alternative to JNOV motions, or filed on their own, this motion seeks to try the case all over again due to a flaw in the trial process which tainted the verdict or yielded a result amounting to a miscarriage of justice. The trial judge has wide latitude in deciding whether to order a new trial.

III. Motion to Alter or Amend the Judgment - usually limited to bench trials, these motions seek to modify the court’s ruling in some less drastic way than total reversal.

After ten days have elapsed since the judgment was entered, losing litigants have a much more difficult time in changing the result at the trial court level and are usually limited to filing a motion to vacate the judgment on grounds of fraud, mistake, irregularity or newly discovered evidence which could not have been obtained by the time of trial.

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