Jerald Hammann v. 1-800 Ideas, Inc., et al.

Jury trials in federal civil cases have fallen to 0.63% of all cases for the 12 months ending on September 2017. Further, judicial dispositions favorable to plaintiffs dropped from approximately 70% in 1985 to 33% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Because toll-free telephone numbers are a scarce public resource, hoarding and brokering them is prohibited. Routing multiple toll-free telephone numbers to a single subscriber creates a rebuttable presumption of hoarding and number brokering. Since Respondents routed more than 6,000 numbers to themselves, they were always going to lose on liability. Therefore, the district court struck nearly all of Petitioner's damages evidence. It struck two expert witnesses, one lay witness, one non-opinion fact witness, and huge stacks of business records establishing damages, including Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The first question presented is whether the court erred in granting summary judgment to the Respondents for Petitioner's alleged failure to prove damages. The second question presented is whether the court violated Petitioner's Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury. The third question presented is whether the court violated Petitioner's Fifth Amendment due process rights.