Goldman did apparently win a jury trial. While this case looks horrible the idea of a judge respecting a jury's verdict doesn't seem like the horrible part.
Is there precedent for a judge overturning a jury's verdict immediately after it's handed down? I imagine you'd need a reason quite a bit above and beyond "I disagree" but even so I'm not sure if that would violate the right to a jury trial or not.
In general, in the U.S. a judge can overturn a jury's verdict only if the judge concludes:
(i) that no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict on the evidence of record -- if reasonable people could disagree, given the evidence of record,, then the verdict must stand; or
(ii) that the verdict was (or was likely to have been -- I forget which it is) the product of bias or prejudice; or
(iii) that (in hindsight) the judge screwed up in giving the jury its instructions about how to apply the law.
There are also some procedural prerequisites, e.g., for item (i) the losing party must have moved for "judgment as a matter of law" before the case was submitted to the jury, while for item (iii) the losing party must have objected to the flawed jury instructions before they were given to the jury.
For federal courts these requirements derive from the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, which provides in part: " ... no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States [which means federal courts], than according to the rules of the common law." [1]
