How To Create a Teaching Section in an Limited Liability Case
Transcription
Sari de la Motte here. I specialize in helping attorneys communicate with jurors. In today's video, we're going to discuss how you create a teaching section in an admitted liability case.
Just to review, for those of you who don't know what I mean by "teaching section," I take that from Rick Friedman, although I do put my own spin on it. The teaching section is the part in your opening statement that happens before the story. It gives the jurors some context for why you're going to be talking about what you're talking about.
In my version of the teaching section, it's completely neutral. You're going to teach about how a perfect hospital, perfect company, perfect doctor, should've done whatever wasn't done in this particular case, so that when you tell the story, the jurors can then put two and two together. Jurors, if this is done right, will say, "Wait a minute, they didn't do all those things that you just said a perfect hospital, doctor, company would do in this situation!" The question then becomes, how do you do that in an admitted liability case, where you can't talk about the action that caused the harm?
We had that exact situation last spring here in Portland, in a case where a man was walking in the crosswalk with the light, at 6:00 in the morning, when a garbage truck made an illegal right turn, and practically ripped the man's leg from his body. So what can we talk about in the teaching section? We can't talk about safe driving or more specifically, how to operate a garbage truck safely. We considered talking about what it means to apologize appropriately, but we thought, no, that's too "advocate-y." Then it hit me. What we can talk about is how to do the perfect amputation.
At first, the attorney was confused. He said to me, "What do you mean? This isn't really an amputation case. Even though that's what ended up happening." I said, "That's the beauty of it. Let's talk about how an amputation should happen, particularly when the person has chosen to have that happen, versus what happened in this case, where he had no choice in the matter."
In the teaching section, we told the jurors, "In order to do your jobs in this case, you're going to have to learn about amputation and prosthetics, because there's a lot of talk about prosthetics in this case." We talked about how amputations are normally not wanted, even if you know you have to have one. We said there's some counseling involved, and we talked about how they're done in a sterile environment. We talked about how there are doctors present making very precise cuts, and how there's pain medication, and how they want to do things a very specific way, to make sure they preserve as much muscle and joint as possible.
Then we said, "Now let me tell you the story about what happened in this case." And as we told the story of the garbage truck, we highlighted how this near amputation occured in public, with no privacy, and how it wasn't sterile due to the grime and dirt, and how the blood went into the gutter, with everyone walking by, and how the pain must have been unbearable as he had no pain medication ahed of time. By juxtaposing the teaching section against the story, jurors were thinking, "Whoa, this is just so awful. Not only was this happening against his will, but the way that it happened was so terrible." And they awarded us $14 million in that case.
There's always a way to create a teaching section, even in an admitted liability case. Teaching sections help you persuade the jury to your point of view, by juxtaposing what a perfect situation would look like, against what happened in this particular case.
Just to review, for those of you who don't know what I mean by "teaching section," I take that from Rick Friedman, although I do put my own spin on it. The teaching section is the part in your opening statement that happens before the story. It gives the jurors some context for why you're going to be talking about what you're talking about.
In my version of the teaching section, it's completely neutral. You're going to teach about how a perfect hospital, perfect company, perfect doctor, should've done whatever wasn't done in this particular case, so that when you tell the story, the jurors can then put two and two together. Jurors, if this is done right, will say, "Wait a minute, they didn't do all those things that you just said a perfect hospital, doctor, company would do in this situation!" The question then becomes, how do you do that in an admitted liability case, where you can't talk about the action that caused the harm?
We had that exact situation last spring here in Portland, in a case where a man was walking in the crosswalk with the light, at 6:00 in the morning, when a garbage truck made an illegal right turn, and practically ripped the man's leg from his body. So what can we talk about in the teaching section? We can't talk about safe driving or more specifically, how to operate a garbage truck safely. We considered talking about what it means to apologize appropriately, but we thought, no, that's too "advocate-y." Then it hit me. What we can talk about is how to do the perfect amputation.
At first, the attorney was confused. He said to me, "What do you mean? This isn't really an amputation case. Even though that's what ended up happening." I said, "That's the beauty of it. Let's talk about how an amputation should happen, particularly when the person has chosen to have that happen, versus what happened in this case, where he had no choice in the matter."
In the teaching section, we told the jurors, "In order to do your jobs in this case, you're going to have to learn about amputation and prosthetics, because there's a lot of talk about prosthetics in this case." We talked about how amputations are normally not wanted, even if you know you have to have one. We said there's some counseling involved, and we talked about how they're done in a sterile environment. We talked about how there are doctors present making very precise cuts, and how there's pain medication, and how they want to do things a very specific way, to make sure they preserve as much muscle and joint as possible.
Then we said, "Now let me tell you the story about what happened in this case." And as we told the story of the garbage truck, we highlighted how this near amputation occured in public, with no privacy, and how it wasn't sterile due to the grime and dirt, and how the blood went into the gutter, with everyone walking by, and how the pain must have been unbearable as he had no pain medication ahed of time. By juxtaposing the teaching section against the story, jurors were thinking, "Whoa, this is just so awful. Not only was this happening against his will, but the way that it happened was so terrible." And they awarded us $14 million in that case.
There's always a way to create a teaching section, even in an admitted liability case. Teaching sections help you persuade the jury to your point of view, by juxtaposing what a perfect situation would look like, against what happened in this particular case.