Patent holding company DataTreasury’s trial against U.S. Bancorp last spring resulted in both a huge win — a jury verdict of $27 million and a finding of willful infringement — and a big controversy, in the form of an inflammatory remark made by the company’s lead trial counsel, Nelson Roach.

That banks routinely process their customers’ debit card purchases to maximize overdraft fees is an allegation that’s sure to make a juror’s blood boil. But in a bench trial set to begin Monday, it will be up to U.S.

A federal jury last week acquitted Rodil Nochez, a leader of a San Francisco chapter of the MS-13 street gang and the first member to go before a jury. Prosecutors hardly seemed to relish a trial against Nochez, who is a mere minnow in a much larger government trawl targeting the violent MS-13 gang.

Robert Kelley, the attorney for former smoker Cindy Naugle, who last week won a whopping $300 million verdict in a suit against Philip Morris, spoke to The Am Law Litigation Daily about why the award in Naugle’s case was so much larger than those in other so-called Engle progeny suits. One reason, Kelley said, was that this was the first trial in which the jury heard about the “real financial resources” of Philip Morris. “The jury was impressed by the numbers,” he said.