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The other jurors are probably correct here, the standard of evidence for a civil trial is not beyond reasonable doubt but instead "more likely" (preponderance of the evidence) and when one side is bringing evidence and the other is a known scumbag who only uses words, it tilts likelyhood pretty hard. I think his defense was just incompetent, either through bad luck with the lawyer or because the defendant himself is garbage and both made the bad call to go with a jury trial to begin with and demanded this bad defense strategy against counsel (more common than you mignt think, lots of people refuse to trust the lawyers for some reason).
Add in the possibility that your framing might be missing any more details in her favor too, and it seems like siding with Becky with here is quite reasonable.
Why would a civil trial jury bring fraud charges? Criminal charges is a really odd thing to bring up multiple times in a civil suit in the US and inconsistencies like this points to you either being really confused about what was going on (likewise with not knowing the difference in evidentiary standard) or perhaps the story itself is fabricated.
I (as a mod) do not appreciate the low-key insinuations that the OP is lying, and while I'd have let "your framing might be missing any more details in her favor" go (because yes, that is certainly possible), you have no reason to be accusing him of outright making up this entire story. Do people make up stories to post here? Yes, I'm sure they do, though less frequently than on reddit - I have certainly raised my eyebrows at a few implausible just-so stories posted here - but "maybe this is all made up" is a shitty thing to say just by way of disagreement with the thesis.
There is a specific reason that I gave, a jury trial would not be deciding if they give him criminal charges or not. It is possible he misspoke or misunderstood something, but the story as it sounds right now is not true, because the civil jury would not be deciding against fraud charges as it would not have the ability to do that to begin with. That was never a potential thing.
And it's not even some weird special super unique jurisdiction thing as I checked that with the bots
He either completely misunderstood what the jury was empowered to deliberate there (he might have meant civil liability fraud) or it's fake. But it could not have been fraud charges. When someone says they've seen a flying unicorn the response is "you either mistook something else for that or you're lying".
Well, I checked with the bots is there such a thing as civil fraud - "what is the difference between civil fraud and criminal fraud?" - and they told me yes there is and linked me to legal advice and everything:
Civil liability fraud is not referred to by "fraud charges", charges are brought by a prosecutor.
There was no prosecutor, I never said there was. It was a plaintiff (Becky) suing the Defendant (Chad), the charges/accusations/laws-broken what ever you want to call it were: Breach of Contract, Unjust Enrichment, and Fraud. If your first response to improper legal terminology is accuse me of fabrication, I think the internet has ruined your mind.
Except that wasn't my first response, the very start of the sentence was actually saying you didn't know what you were talking about and were showing a misunderstanding about what the jury would have been adjudicating.
A civil jury would not be deciding criminal charges for fraud, thus we have the two options.
Those are the only two options, given that the claim itself is known to be incorrect (unless my knowledge and the double check was wrong and there is a weird jurisdiction thing going on, but it would be an incredibly strange thing in the US system).
As we have confirmed right now when you said "improper legal terminology", I was right. That is option 1, you were mistaken. You have admitted to this yourself right there in that comment. You are complaining about my factually sound conclusion proven to be correct.
You are just wrong, it was you who claimed fraud can only be criminal. I never claimed such, I claimed the charge was fraud in civil court. Go read the link in this comment, NC allows Fraud under a Miscellaneous Tort in civil court.
Edit: if you want to be super pedantic about the use of "charge" vs "accuse" then sure, have your bagel. Everyone else seemed to understand what I meant colloquially, so I guess you can pick bullshit fights without being clear. But you are strictly wrong that fraud is not also a civil court tort.
Fraud can be civil. Fraud charges would not be, which is the term you literally used. You were mistaken, which is what I predicted to be the case.
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