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    Storytelling for the Defense: Defense Attorney's Courtroom Guide to Beating Plaintiffs At Their Own Game
    Storytelling for the Defense: Defense Attorney's Courtroom Guide to Beating Plaintiffs At Their Own Game
    Storytelling for the Defense: Defense Attorney's Courtroom Guide to Beating Plaintiffs At Their Own Game
    Ebook65 pages49 minutes

    Storytelling for the Defense: Defense Attorney's Courtroom Guide to Beating Plaintiffs At Their Own Game

    By Merrie Jo Pitera and Barbara Hillmer

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    About this ebook

    Storytelling is primal for humans—one of the few human traits that is truly universal across cultures and through all of known history. The goal of Storytelling for the Defense is to help defense attorneys understand and reclaim the fundamental value of storytelling in the context of persuading jurors and winning cases. Defense attorneys must realize that the power of the narrative is not the sole purview of the plaintiff. The book demonstrates that a compelling story, not facts or logic alone, is the best defense.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJan 11, 2016
    ISBN9781941870518
    Storytelling for the Defense: Defense Attorney's Courtroom Guide to Beating Plaintiffs At Their Own Game

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      Book preview

      Storytelling for the Defense - Merrie Jo Pitera

      Company

      SECTION I

      NOBODY ROOTS FOR GOLIATH

      The problem is plaintiffs have a ready-made underdog story in civil trials: David (their client) against Goliath (your client). Remember, nobody roots for Goliath.

      CHAPTER 1

      ENTER THE BLACK HAT HIRED GUN PLAINTIFF ATTORNEYS

      We are not here to damn all plaintiff attorneys—just some of them.

      Beating plaintiff attorneys in a civil trial is a difficult game to win because you are playing against a stacked deck. The best and most effective attorneys are excellent storytellers, and the best plaintiff attorneys often play to jurors’ natural distrust of big companies. Our culture has been influenced by decisions like the exploding Ford Pinto or the Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s environmental disaster that made a celebrity of Erin Brockovich.

      There is a category of plaintiff attorneys, however, that we must recognize beyond the crusading attorneys that have shaped society. We call them the Black Hat Hired Guns. On the outside they position themselves as knights in shining armor on the scene to save the day. We won’t sugarcoat it. Many of these hired gun plaintiff attorneys are opportunistic and profit-motivated by taking advantage of trends to line their pockets. In the end they increase prices, eliminate jobs, and even kill companies.

      Do not underestimate the power of these Black Hat Hired Guns. Beating them at their own game is going to be tough because they play games with their own clients, evidence, facts, justice, and their own stories. They do a good job of posing as the champions of the weak and defenseless, while living off settlements and outsized damage awards from companies who find it cheaper to settle than defend.

      During the past several decades, we have seen a disturbing trend of these Black Hat Hired Guns winning huge cases against corporations as they preyed upon the biases of jurors, often by playing loose with the facts of a case. A March 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek story titled Judges Slam More and More Plaintiffs’ Attorneys for Corruption captured some of the abuses of plaintiff attorneys, citing cases ranging from a liability verdict against Dole Foods to a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron that were thrown out by judges because of plaintiff attorney corruption. The Businessweek story defined the fundamental problem defense attorneys face in the legal system: When you combine these cases with the criminal convictions several years ago of plaintiffs-bar titans Mel Weiss, Bill Lerach, and Dickie Scruggs—all of whom served time for corrupting the civil justice system—it’s hard to deny that there’s deep dysfunction within a powerful portion of the legal profession that claims to fight corporate abuse on behalf of the little guy.

      To be fair, we have to temper the abuses of Black Hat plaintiff attorneys with the stories of legitimate plaintiff attorneys who are fighting the good fight for their clients and who represent the best of the legal profession. The iconic plaintiff attorney Gerry Spence, who was known for wearing a cowboy hat, was a master at persuading juries in complex cases and his work in the late 1970s Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp. is a classic example of how plaintiff attorneys can make legal ideas accessible to

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