Quote:
Originally Posted by CanidFL 
Carrie – can you explain what they mean by test case and why it isn’t good? I am so far from a lawyer lol. I have no idea about court cases and such but why can’t this be considered a good thing? Didn’t the family get paid for a vaccine causing autism?
I’m just a little confused as to why this case has to be dismissed so quickly when the family won.
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no prob...I am not really educated in this area either, so I all I know is what I have read from following the trial. So, with that in mind....basically, there were three initial cases that were heard, the first three cases were also test cases. These were to determine if the thousands of others in the wings should go forward....from my understanding, there were to determine if there was sufficient evidence and ...for lack of other words, ability to win?
Now that the first three are over, they are looking for three more to do in May 2008. This case, because it was settled out of court, was determined not to be a case they could now put to trial. (now whether this is because of the no double trial rule- cant be tried for the same thing twice- or because there was some stipulation in the settlement or because it was simply "already case closed" I have no idea because I don't know enough about law)
It won't be precedent setting (that is, cases closed in court can have a precedent effect in court- can be pointed to and used to argue....someone out there can probably explain this a lot better than me

) while others, such as the recent merck cases, will be because they were brought before a judge and jury.
Warning on all this, I could be totally off on my reasoning (such as why they didn't want it as a test case given it had already been settled) but I think this is about right.