You rarely see writ proceedings successfully prosecuted during the middle of a trial, yet that's exactly what happens here. Moreover, the dispute here goes all the way to the California Supreme Court.
Plaintiff sued a school district for being sexually assaulted, and while the district admitted negligence, it argued that some of Plaintiff's damages resulted not from the assault by the teacher, but from a later sexual assault of the Plaintiff. The parties then fought about whether evidence of the subsequent sexual assault was admissible, and after the parties had given their opening statement at trial, a writ was filed, the trial got stayed, and ultimately it goes all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which holds: "Maybe the evidence is admissible. Read what we've written and try to resolve the issue again, trial court."
(Okay, that's not an actual quote, obviously, but you get the point.)
One procedurally interesting thing about all of this is that, to reiterate, all the writ proceedings transpired after the jury was empaneled and while the trial was temporarily stayed. So now that the writ proceedings are over, the trial can restart.
Which is fine, and the California Supreme Court notes that as long as the jury is still empaneled -- which at oral argument the parties confirmed -- that same jury can get back together and resolve the matter on remand.
But the opening arguments here were over two years ago. The trial has been stayed since around May of 2021; that's when the whole thing got interrupted.
Can we please just simply empanel a new jury. Here's no way that one or more of the jurors haven't looked up the status of the case or what the writ proceedings involved. I don't care how much you instructed them not to or what they might say at voir dire. It's way to big of a risk to re-empanel them again after two years of sitting at home. (Without much benefit, either; the only thing they heard as far as I can tell were the opening statements, which might well have to be redone anyway depending on what the trial court holds on remand.)
Let's just play it safe and restart the whole thing over again, okay?
