she says. “What you want to do is to gut
them, but you want to do it as quickly and
as elegantly as possible. And sometimes
you have to know when to stop.”
And sometimes, says Camiña, the
jury does want to see some blood, as
in Dillard’s, Inc. v. i2 Technologies, Inc.
“I knew,” says Camiña of her cross of a
particular witness, “the jury just wanted
me to gut the guy.”
In the case, which currently is on appeal,
the national department store chain
alleged that i2 Technologies, a software
manufacturing company, failed to fulfill its
contract to provide functioning software
to help Dillard’s make replenishment
decisions. This wasn’t Susman Godfrey’s
first case against i2 Technologies. A few
years earlier, the firm had represented
Kmart in a similar suit. Although that case
was settled out of court, Camiña had seen
enough evidence to suggest that Kmart’s
and Dillard’s experiences were “business as
usual” for i2 Technologies.
“The Dillard’s case was the most
pervasive, the most outrageous fraud
scheme I had ever seen a company do. The
evidence was overwhelming,” says Camiña
of documents like internal email messages
between i2 Technologies employees
that suggested they were aware of their
products’ flaws. Says Terry Oxford, who
partnered with Camiña on the case, “Once
the trial started and the evidence went in,
I felt pretty strongly we were going to win.
The question was, how much?”
After deliberating for more than two
days, the jury awarded Dillard’s $150
million in punitive damages and more
than $76 million in benefit-of-the-bargain
damages. It was the eighth largest verdict
in the nation last year, according to The
National Law Journal.
But for Camiña the victory was
bittersweet. During the trial’s second week,
her 88-year-old father suffered a brain
aneurysm. Camiña flew to San Antonio
immediately and was with him when he
died a few days later. A decorated World
War II veteran, Armando Camiña was his
daughter’s first role model, a humble man
who rarely spoke about his war experiences.
“He taught me that you can have a dispute
with somebody, but you don’t have to be
discourteous. You can have courage and
confidence, but you don’t have to beat up
on people. You don’t have to be tough to be
respected,” says Camiña.
