Guess what - the email server has crashed

Am in an absolutely foul detestable mood.  The stupid office servers have had a "catastrophic failure."  24 hours ago and counting.

Can feel blood pressure increasing.  Stomach is sitting at base of throat.  Have a prehearing statement of proof due today.  Am growling orders.  Punching numbers on the phone.  One after the other.  Apologize for being so awful.  Then go back to being horrible.

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Should the dead person have been allowed to tell the story

I told my kids a lot of stories when they were little.  Pictures were good and well.  But what they really liked was when I acted out the characters.

In trial opening is the opportunity to tell the story.  There are no rules that say we need to read it and be boring.  Over the years I have ben a bus, a cross walk, and other various objects or people when I've told the opening story.   But look what happened in this case.  The judge was not used to having a story told with quite as much dramatic flair.

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The last class

The teams are putting on the final trial.  It is our last class of the year.  The seventh year Bill Bailey and I have taught trial advocacy together at the UW.  (He's a professor on staff now in the law school)

Rush around all day doing our regular lawyer stuff.  Inch along thru rush hour traffic to get to the school by 5:30.  Stomachs often rumbling.  Sometimes choke down a power bar.

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Deposition of a defense doctor - 3 months and you're cured part 2

Remember my defense medical doctor movie.  Perhaps you thought it was fictitious.  Or at least exaggerated.  Because after all it was writen in a huff.  Directly after the deposition.  Before it was transcribed.

Well, here is the actual transcript.  You be the judge.  What is funnier (more obnoxious): the movie or the real thing.

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How to NOT hit (and injure or kill) a pedestrian

Here are some tips from cases I've handled on how NOT to run down a pedestrian*.

  1. When the bus you are driving arrives at an intersection.  And comes to a stop.  And there are pedestrians already on the sidewalk curb getting ready to cross, wait your turn.  Let them cross.  They were there first.  Do not turn your head to look for oncoming traffic and begin to drive forward as they are walking in front of you.
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All dressed up and nowhere to go

The clerk sends an email on Thursday.  Our trial starts Monday.  Or it is supposed to.  This case has been scheduled for trial for over a year.  But SNAP!  Just like that.  A criminal case pushes its way past us.  This happens in November.

Fast forward.  We are now set to start the same trial June 4.  After a six month delay.  Everyone is ready to go.  Some of the witnesses have booked flights and hotels.  But wait.  SNAP!  Just like that.  We are bumped again.  By another criminal case.    We are now supposed to start this whole thing over again in October. Supposedly.

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Deposition of a defense doctor - the movie

Witnesses who make up crap - make my day.  Especially when they are defense doctors.  This one was so obnoxious that I made a movie in her honor.

Here is the set up.

A guy is careless.  Because of his carelessness, your head strikes an object.  Your neck hyper extends backwards.  You have never gone to the doctor for neck pain.  But after this happens, you have problems right away.  Your neck doesn't only hurt - it radiates pain down your arm and your hand is numb.

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Form of the day: Defense Medical Exam Agreement

Some of the richest doctors no longer practice medicine.  Instead they make up to half a million dollars a year, working for insurance companies.  Their assignment:  examine injured plaintiffs with a jaundiced eye.  Then proclaim they should be cured in 60 to 90 days.  Sometimes a little longer.

About five years ago, there was a mean retired neurosurgeon who said a  mother was paralyzed and in a wheelchair because she made up the injury in her mind.  He called it "hysterical paralysis."   Made for a good defense.  Of course in reality, she's still paralyzed today.  Apparently the hysteria hasn't ended.

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Fargo - Yah

Head jerks forward.  Eyes open.  Where the heck am I.   Are we still in Minneapolis.   Can’t figure out if the plane has taken off.  Or is landing.  It hasn’t taken off.  Thirty minutes later we bounce down in Fargo North Dakota.

Alan the Executive Director of the trial lawyer association has texted me to call him.  I do.  The airport terminal is clean, new and small.  At the landing by the escalator, a big tall blond woman is hugging another big tall blond woman in greeting.  They appear to be sisters.  Talking in a language that is definitely not English.

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Ten reasons I'd rather try a case against a good lawyer

An attorney asked me to help try a case a week before trial.  Day one I arrived with a notice of appearance.  The defense lawyer objected due to "unfair surprise."  Overruled.

It was not a complex trial but the defense lawyer struggled.  Mightily.

After the good (for us) verdict came in this is what the jurors said.  They had a really hard time with how bad the defense lawyer was.  They felt very sorry for the defendant for having such a poor lawyer.  Closing argument was so awful they could not even "bear to look" at her.  They had to make extra sure they didn't rule against the defendant because of counsel.  So they tried to even things out.   Thankfully they were able to give us a good verdict but this left a permanent impression with me.

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Co-opting Ye Old Glass Is Half Full Defense

The only health condition the defense won't try to spin - is death.

One technique used against plaintiffs, is to paint them as negative whiners.  The defense mocks the injured person by saying they are overly focusing on their injury and see the glass as half empty.  The logic is - if the person had a better mindset - they would see the glass is half full and everything would be better.

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How to turn in a bad driver

We can do more than file a lawsuit when a bad driver hurts our clients.  We owe it to society to get those drivers off the road.

State licensing departments have simple forms that can be filled out to trigger an investigation.  They don't publicize these but they exist.

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Tips for attorneys - from a children's novelist

We are rewarded in school for using sentences so complex, that the reader or listener is virtually tortured by them.  As grown up lawyers this means we tend to spout legalese to normal people.  How as trial lawyers do we shrug off these intellectual habits.  So we can tell a good story.

Look at these tips from C.S. Lewis (he of The Chronicles of Narnia fame).  This is taken from a letter he wrote to a young Fan in 1956.

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The "P"s

I had one night to come up with a speech.  it was our trial lawyer's annual convention.  And I needed to fill in for a sick speaker.  That evening on the treadmill  the speech came together.   Now a decade or so later, here is a blog version of The "P"s.

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