Today was the big day.
Last night after court ended, we hung out in Vinny’s office for a couple of hours going over my testimony. They wanted to make sure that I knew my chart and my deposition cold. I did. I gave them some pointers on what questions to ask me.
Louise needs to lay off the caffeine. She can’t handle stress very well. At one point she stopped in mid-sentence, grabbed me by the shirt sleeve and said “You are fifty percent of our case. You can’t get mad at the other attorney. The jurors have to like you. This is our case to lose.” My first instinct was to say “No, this is your case to lose, so back off.” But I bit my tongue. Maybe it was my lack of sleep, but she was really getting on my nerves.
So this morning I get to court and everybody is asking me if “I’m ready.” I was ready a month ago. I can’t wait to get up on the stand and tell my story. Everyone wants to know if I’m worried about the Grinch. Nope. Not a bit.
As I looked over to the plaintiff’s table, the Grinch appeared even more nervous than usual. He was sitting at his table ruffling through his notes, running his hands through his hair, and feverishly writing things down on a legal pad.
I made a point to loudly pull up the chair to the desk right next to his table and sit there whistling while reading a newspaper. Each time I turned the page, I ruffled it loudly just to irritate him. I could tell it was getting to him. Bet his underarms had a couple of huge sweat stains right about then.
On the inside I was a little nervous. I think everyone has a fear of the unknown – not knowing what questions are going to be asked and worrying that you may say something that gets taken the wrong way and ruins your case. It made me feel better seeing how nervous the Grinch had become. He knew that I was his make or break witness. If I did well, his case was pretty much blown. If I did poorly, he might have a shot. Knowing, or at least thinking, that I ruffled his feathers as I ruffled the newspaper gave me a sense of zen inner peace before my day began. I once attended a lecture on medicine and the law and a quote I heard about witness testimony kept ringing through my mind: “Be like the label on a jar of mayonnaise – keep cool, do not freeze.”
Everyone had gathered and the judge brought the court to order. The Grinch stood up and called me to the stand.
Here goes.
I was considered an adverse witness. That meant that the Grinch could ask me very leading “yes/no” questions. As my testimony progressed, I was becoming frustrated because the Grinch only brought out portions of the history favorable to his case. He wouldn’t allow me to say anything about other points that would explain his incorrect inferences.
One of the issues in his case is whether the patient’s abdomen was bleeding. It shouldn’t have been an issue because it wasn’t bleeding. Never. But the paramedic’s note said that there was blood, so the Grinch made it an issue. He never once asked me to describe the patient’s abdomen. He was also waving the paramedic’s note in front of the jurors, but he never once showed that note to me. That really made me mad. In fact, I tried to reference to note in my answer to one of his questions and he cut me off short. I asked him if I could finish my answer and the judge stopped me and said “No, it was a yes or no question.” Son of a bitch.
One point of contention is that he asked me several questions in a row whether or not the “standard of care required” that I do certain things, such as calling the surgeon immediately, getting an operating room ready, etc. I told him that the standard of care did not require that I do any of those things. Several minutes later, he prefaced a question by saying that I admitted a surgeon should have been called earlier. I denied it and then he demanded that the record be read back. I stopped him and clarified my answer.
“Let me be clear. The standard of care absolutely did not require me to contact a surgeon as soon as the patient arrived at the hospital. Period. You heard it from several experts and now you’re hearing it from me.”
He didn’t like that very much.
On the inside I was high-fiving myself. On the outside, I had a Hellmann’s label stuck to my forehead.
The Grinch ended his questioning a lot more quickly than he apparently planned.
Then Louise got up and started asking me questions. A sudden jolt of fear hit me. What the hell was going on? Why was Vinny sitting this one out? Mayonnaise, WhiteCoat. Mayonnaise.
Louise asked me very briefly about my training and then dove headfirst into the issues in the case. I was ticked that she didn’t give me the chance to talk about all of my publications and my teaching duties. I thought that those duties might make the jurors respect me a little bit more. Thinking about being mad while trying to answer her questions wasn’t doing me any good, so I let it go.
We went through the case and I explained things to the jury. It seemed as if the jurors were quite interested in what I had to say, which is a good thing. Then I made one of those slip-ups I was worried about. I said that there was a “delay” in obtaining the results of some tests. I didn’t mean it in a bad sense, but I saw the hospital attorney’s head snap around to glare at me, and I immediately understood what he was upset about. So I attempted to clear up the discrepancy by stating that it was probably perceived as a delay even though things were being accomplished in a timely manner. I gave an example of how everyone is used to seeing a patient on the TV show “ER” get wheeled in by ambulance, have a doctor look at them and bark some orders, then go to commercial. By the time the commercial is finished, all the labs are back and the patient is admitted. “Things just don’t happen that quickly in real life,” I said. Several jurors laughed at that one.
It made me feel better that the jurors were listening as I explained my side of the case. When I was talking to them, every one of them was looking at me and many of them were nodding their heads as I explained things. Definitely a good feeling.
After Louise and the hospital attorney finished their questions, we took a lunch break. I walked over to Louise and asked her if she planned on letting me tell the jury about my teaching duties and my publications. She didn’t even look at me. She had her head in her notes underlining things and just waved her hand at me in a “talk to the hand” position. I can’t tell if she’s nervous or she’s trying to piss me off. She’s succeeding at both.
I ate lunch alone and I wasn’t in a very good mood. Vinny was supposed to be doing this trial. Why is Louise doing my examination and screwing things up? She’s being a spaz. I have to stop trying to be a lawyer. No questions. I have to trust them. Then I got a good omen. I was reading through the paper and I almost never read the horoscopes. So today I happened to read my horoscope to gain any prophetic bits of information. Here’s what my horoscope said:
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Others take you seriously and see you in a new light, with deeper love and more respect. You’re able to speak with authority, yet are not afraid to ask for assistance when necessary. Your sense of duty and responsibility prevails.
Holy crap. I might just call Miss Cleo to ask her what the end of the week looks like. Then I’d be afraid she’d give me bad news. I clipped that little horoscope and put it in my wallet.
After lunch, the Grinch got back up to ask me further questions. He appeared angry. He immediately started making snide remarks toward me. One of the first questions out of his mouth was whether I told the co-defendant physician that I screwed up the care of the patient. Vinny and Louise immediately objected. The judge stood up and said “Outside NOW.” When they came back, the Grinch no longer had that look of anger in his eye. I later learned that in the judge’s chambers, the Grinch was upset because he thought I was acting too scared and was playing to the emotions of the jury. Not sure how someone acts “too” scared, and not sure how asking me a BS question like that would change things, but whatever. He was desperate and I was winning.
“You thought that you could just ignore the patient when he was out of the emergency department getting tests done, didn’t you? He wasn’t your responsibility then, was he?”
That got me mad and I raised my voice at him. “Listen, sir, I would go out of my way to help any patient anywhere they needed help. It doesn’t make a bit of difference where the patient is located.”
A little later in the questioning, the Grinch started making a big deal out of the fact that my note did not contain “diagnoses” but that it only contained “symptoms” such as abdominal pain. I told him that “abdominal pain” was an appropriate diagnosis because I wasn’t sure what was causing the symptoms. He tried to infer that I was required to write down diagnoses, not symptoms.
“That’s not the way that medicine is practiced,” I calmly told him.
“No, that’s not the way YOU practice medicine.”
“Nooo, that’s not the way any physician practices medicine.”
Then he jeered “You just didn’t write the diagnoses down because you knew that you missed the diagnosis and you were trying to hide it, weren’t you?”
The judge yelled at him … again.
I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and looked at the jurors. One of the jurors actually sighed out loud. Several rolled their eyes and smiled back at me.
It was pretty empowering seeing that the jury seemed to be on my side. I felt confident. Everyone in the room could tell that the Grinch was flailing. He initially told the judge that he planned to ask me questions for at least two hours. I think he asked me questions for less than 45 minutes.
One of the things that I did note when I was testifying was that for the first time the plaintiff was actually looking somewhere else besides the wall across the room from her. She was watching me — intently. She still had her stone face, but a couple of times I saw her wipe away tears. My story differed from hers and I knew that each of us believed the other was not telling the truth. Deep inside I still felt sorry for what had happened to her. I could tell that she blamed me for everything. She never looked away when I watched her. I just got that same blank stare.
After I finished my testimony, our emergency medicine expert was called. Vinny was having him explain several of the terms that I just had finished explaining and many of the jurors started rolling their eyes again. Nobody was writing things on their notepads. A couple of them flipped through their notepads while our expert was talking – probably comparing what I said to what he said. Hopefully that is a good sign. Vinny seemed to catch on to the vibes from the jury fairly quickly and he significantly shortened the expert’s testimony. The direct examination only lasted about thirty minutes.
During the cross, the first thing the Grinch did was pull out the ambulance run sheet and start in on the bleeding from the patient’s stomach again. Of course, the Grinch didn’t mention anything to me about it when I was on the stand. When he was waving the ambulance report around, it made me mad. I felt like standing up and saying “if it’s such a big deal, why didn’t you ask ME about it an hour ago?” That’s the way the game is played. Not going to let it get to me. He’s the one losing.
Just shows me how each side only presents things favorable to its position and avoids contrary explanations.
Vinny was right. It’s all a show.
“It’s all a show.”
No, it’s not “all a show.” It’s a presentation of two different views of an encounter between people or in some cases companies because the two sides cannot agree on what happened and whether it should have happened. It has real facts, real people, and generally two very honest, but competing, interpretations of events. Not to mention real consequences.
Does how you communicate the above matter? Of course. The quality of your communication of any idea or position in any situation matters.
In other words … A Show. Actually, it’s a circus with the judge as the ringmaster.
You must go to some odd circuses.
Our lawyer told us exactly that when our auto accident injury case came to trial. It is a show. He was one of the best at the time, and he said a lot depends on which lawyer is the best actor.
Like it or not, emotion figures strongly in decision-making. I just read an article on “confirmation bias” by Michael Shermer for Scientific American. He reports on 30 men were asked to assess comments by the 2004 U.S. presidential candidates while having their brains scanned by MRI. The part of the brain normally associated with reasoning was quiet, the part of the brain associated with processing emotion.
It’s a show, put on for the benefit of the jury.
Sorry…meant to say the emotion part of the brain was most active.
Good show. You didn’t go all “House” on him.
Don’t pay attention to Matt, It is all show. It is show business for ugly people.
The frustrating thing on the stand is that even though it is your turn to tell your story (which you have rehearsed in your head a million times) you are still within the constraints of the attorneys and the questions they ask, and dependent on how well they do.
That was a raw deal that you did not know that Louise was going to be doing the questioning. I would have been pissed. I think the star attorney gives newbies a shot in the courtroom — sort of like an intern getting to do his first appy.
Why would she even get to do the questioning if she was representing the hospital?? Are you an empoyee of the hospital
“My story differed from hers and I knew that each of us believed the other was not telling the truth.”
That’s why we have this “show” of an advocacy system.
Some countries have a judge ask you whatever they feel like asking and then be done with it. We let each side put their best face forward and poke holes in their opponent’s argument.
The plaintiff got her turn. WhiteCoat got his turn. Everyone got their turn. Fair’s fair.
Not quite, Max. You have this show to enrich, empower the lawyer, and to intimidate all productive parties, which are being plundered.
@Matt – You’ve never encountered Tom Moore.
“Outside, now.” You won the case right there. The jury has no idea about the case, cares less. They hear the judge yell at one side, that is their signal.
I had a Neurologist who testified for defenses tell me that the way to counter a “Yes/No” question is to state the following to the attorney asking you the question:
You have had me swear to answer truthfully, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In order to answer your question I must explain beyond a Yes or No answer to give you the whole truth. Will you allow me to proceed?
Brilliant. How did that work out?
“Mr. Neurologist Expert, I understand that you have been paid by Mr. Defense Lawyer to tell a story here, and you’ll get a chance to tell it, but right now I need to make sure I understand exactly what you’re saying and I can’t do that if you keep giving speeches. Please just answer my questions the way that His Honor has instructed you to.”
Then what?
This is where the treasonous defense lawyer should call for a mistrial due to plaintiff lawyer harassing a witness, and demand all legal costs to date. If the judge refuses, the defense lawyer should demand that plaintiff lawyer be disqualified. If the biased judge allows bullying of a witness, demand the judge be disqualified. This judge did not allow any bullying, and should be attacked.
If these motions do not work, defense has at least pointed out the misconduct to the jury, by making a stink.
After these measures, ethics charges should be filed against the plaintiff lawyer.
See these rules of conduct.
http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/204/chapter81/s3.4.html
http://www.pacode.com/secure/data/204/chapter81/s3.5.html
These have no statute of limitations that I could find. Defendants should be rummaging through these rules and filing complaints against the plaintiff lawyer for each inappropriate utterance. The plaintiff lawyer should be under a continual cloud of investigation for months and years, as the defendant files one complaint for each utterance to one Disciplinary Counsel office of each state where licensed. The defendant should never be alone in uncertainty. The complaints have legal immunity if not divulged to anyone outside of the personal lawyer. The defense lawyer will strongly oppose these perpetual complaints because they make life unbearable for the plaintiff lawyer, drives it out of medmal, and causes defense lawyer unemployment. Do not depend on defense counsel to help you draft a complaint.
One should read all instructions at the website of the state’s Disciplinary Counsel. In the letter, one should reference the plaintiff lawyer’s name address, bar number; the violated Rule of Conduct number, including subsection numbers.
In the body of the letter, one may just tell the facts, and attach any evidence of these. For example, “I believe the lawyer filed a frivolous lawsuit against me because he used an expert outside my specialty, unfamiliar with my standards of due care. I am a family doctor, and the expert was a dermatologist.” All they will read are the facts, and those are the only thing that need go into the letter.
then I think you probably look foolish. The jury wants to know the truth as much as possible and they know you just want little sound bite nuggets
Indeed, the jury wants to know the truth, not just the conclusions of the expert’s report.
The whole truth, the one brought out by questioning.
Try being cute at your trial by disrupting the process. The jury will appreciate it, I swear.
Yeah I want to know how this goes down in real life. It sounds awesome, but…
Sorry. Read, this judge should not be attacked, since he stopped the lawyer bullying.
The civil trial itself is from a church and unlawful in this secular nation.
This is a bogus, anti-scientific carny scam operation. It has no validity, except as a pretext for lawyers to make money. All the lawyer do well, including the losing plaintiff lawyer. Eventually, the result of the lawsuit lotto will come his way. He just needs it to come his way, once in 10 cases a year to do very well.
“then I think you probably look foolish. The jury wants to know the truth as much as possible and they know you just want little sound bite nuggets”
I thought you believed juries were emotional saps too stupid to sort out facts from argument and just waiting to be fooled by a crafty plaintiff’s lawyer?
“I thought you believed juries were emotional saps too stupid to sort out facts from argument and just waiting to be fooled by a crafty plaintiff’s lawyer?”
Never said that. Hopefully you don’t jump to conclusions so easily in your personal relationships.
But regarding your statement. That is usually what the crafty plaintiff lawyer is hoping for.
I thought you might be one of the “reformers” who do think that.
Incidentally, I was asking you if it was true. Thus no conclusions were reached. Good advice in general though.
The jurors are probably the biggest victims here. They were dragooned off the street at the point of a gun. Their lives were interrupted, disrupted. They get paid nothin’ to listen to heinous parties discuss nothing they are interested in. If they fall asleep, they are put in jail. If they talk back, they are put in jail, if they try to leave, they are put in jail by the lawyer slaver on the bench.
Ugh. People. Every right has a responsibility. You have the right to a fair trial, and the responsibility to attend jury DUTY if your number comes up, and you are eligible.
Bbbbut, the poor jurors, they dddon’t get ppppaid enough. I hope you realise that the more people that buy into this argument, the harder it is to have fair trials and the harder it is to be judged by your peers (as your peers would mostly be of the same opinion as you and would try to get out of jury duty any way they could).
Katherine, you are being awfully sanctimonious. Yes you have a responsibility to jury duty, but that does not suddenly make it a holy thing. Never mind the trivial pay, it can put a big hole in someone’s budget when they are paid by the hour or by the job. No work for a day or two, or a week or three, can really put the screws to them, and no the judge will not necessarily make allowances.
I worked for the feds, I didn’t even have to take leave to be on the jury, but the guy who owned his own, one-man computer repair business took it in the shorts, hard. It didn’t help when the judge split five hours of actual courtroom time into three hours one afternoon, and two hours the next morning. Effectively he lost three days of work, several hundred dollars, to hear a comically weak lawsuit that should have never seen the light of day. Nor does it help when a lawyer stands up for closing argument and lies about testimony presented in the trial. It does erode one’s sense of public duty just a tad. When boatloads of lawsuits seem to be generated because a lawyer only has to get a “good” verdict on a few of them to stay in business, the “public duty” aspect goes right out the window.
S.C., I am interested in the experience you’ve had that forms the basis for your commentary. How many malpractice trials have you observed or paticipated in from start to finish? What was your role in these trials (plaintiff, defendant, attorney, witness, expert, juror, judge, uninvolved observer, other)? Is your formal education in law, medicine, both, some other field? I notice you have sometimes in this series asked others about their experiences, so I hope you do not mind my asking you.
AJ Campbell: I am a fictional character.
If I were a person in the United States, I would be one of the owners of the law, pissed at its theft and abuse by the land pirate in rent seeking. I would be stunned that the people running the three branches of government use doctrines and methodology from 13th Century High Middle Ages, in the form of Scholasticism, with supernatural core doctrines, unlawful in our secular nation.
This method includes an infinite list of gotchas resulting in confiscation, very similar to the Dominicans, the church orthodoxy shock troops managing the Inquisition (“You blasphemed by eating meat on Friday, we take your estates for the Church”).
If you are not a lawyer, nor a doctor, and doing anything productive, you are a massive victim of lawyer plunder. If you took 10th Grade World History, you know this scheme only ended 100′s of years later. The French Terror beheaded these land pirates. I doubt Inquisition II can end any other way.
Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself.
Well, that non-response to my questions reinforces my suspicion that the flesh and blood person who types the Supremacy Claus comments has little or no experience with actual malpractice trials, and little interest in how they are conducted in the real world. Apparently the purpose of his sweeping pronouncements is to recruit converts to his dark fantasy universe, where he has unilaterally determined that whole classes of people deserve shunning, hostage-taking, and now beheading.
I have a friend who is on the verge of bankruptcy. The $10 a day he was paid to be on the jury for a 6 month trial was not enough to live on.
He is working two jobs now. His wife is working, they are hanging on by their fingernails.
Judge didn’t excuse any juror who claimed financial hardship if they were forced to serve. Now my friend is paying the price
Public duty is lawyer propaganda. Please, do not buy that lie. You and the judge have a public duty to mow my huge lawn, and to do it working hours, and for free. Do you have a problem with that? I do not care what case law says, it violates the anti-slavery amendment. The self-dealing cult criminal on the bench has immunized itself from that amendment. This cult criminal is a modern day slaver, and should be stopped.
hey whitecoat, sorry to write this as an unrelated comments but I thought you’d find this link interesting… i’d love to hear your take on it.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/30/obama.doctor/index.html?iref=werecommend
Excellent WhiteCoat!
I have never been involved in a lawsuit of any kind, but if I am, I hope to have a judge, and not a jury. The whole system seems like scam.
Someone that determines guilt can’t ask questions? Absurd.
Complex issues resolved in only yes/no questions? Absurd.
I had a neighbor that had to refinance their house due to jury duty. They were dumb enough to live paycheck to paycheck and they were paid by the hour. 3 weeks off for jury duty screwed them. I’m sure this made him biased.
Articles/blogs like this sure do make parts of the legal system seem like a scam.
To clarify, I have no idea if WC was guilty or not. He might be a retard that couldn’t fix a sprained wrist.
Jury determines guilt, Adam. Not the judge. And “guilt” isn’t even the proper term in the civil context. You are determining, in this case at least, if the defendant was negligent. In other civil contexts, you might be determining if they are in breach of a contract, or stole trade secrets, or whether they are the owner of a piece of property. Guilt is a criminal law concept, not civil.
Complex issues are not resolved by yes/no questions. The attorney who calls the witness can ask just about whatever they want and let the witness go on at length. The other side is entitled to ask a question that calls for a yes or no answer and the witness must answer, though. They are not required to allow the witness to say whatever they feel like.
I’m not sure what you see as a scam there. As Max said, both sides get to put on all the facts which support their interpretation of events. Not many limits on that other than the evidence be admissible.
I wouldn’t base my opinion on a whole system on the take of those who don’t like/understand it in the first place. It would be like reaching an opinion on single payer healthcare based solely on the opinions of Massachusetts’ Congressional delegation.
in regards to the yes/no only questions.
i want to be clear that i don’t even think the trial described here took place. it is probably a mishmash of several different things. but i digress.
yes/no only questions are a scam. in real life, not some court room with made up rules, i am rarely, if ever, able to give a client a yes/no answer to a question – and they don’t expect it.
to use an illustration you are fond of, “if it were that easy robots could do it.”
i don’t care what side uses the tactic. it is absurd that it is allowed.
sure, the answerer may ramble, and he might even get a chance to explain the reasoning that went behind the decision – but i guess that is what lawyers are afraid of.
If “yes/no” questions are asked in a dishonest or misleading manner, the other side has ample opportunity to bring that out. The witness, too, can raise whatever objection they want, over and over again.
I fail to see how it’s so prejudicial to let each side generally ask what they want. That will give the jury a complete picture.
You want the jury to have an incomplete picture.
Why is that?
“I wouldn’t base my opinion on a whole system on the take of those who don’t like/understand it in the first place.”
Yeah – that would be like juries deciding a medical malpractice case. I swear to goodness Matt, you seem to make SC appear more sane by the day.
Fry your talent for inept comparisons hasn’t left you.
“Someone that determines guilt can’t ask questions? Absurd.”
My mistake – were you upset that the jury couldn’t ask questions?
“Someone that determines guilt can’t ask questions? Absurd.”
I was referring to the jury not being able to ask questions.
From WSJ:
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/02/02/should-a-jury-be-able-to-ask-questions-during-a-trial/
“When boatloads of lawsuits seem to be generated because a lawyer only has to get a “good” verdict on a few of them to stay in business,”
The vast majority of lawsuits are businesses suing businesses, and generally the lawyers do them on an hourly basis.
A business model of filing boatloads of personal injury lawsuits hoping for a million dollar verdict is a quick route to bankruptcy for the lawyer.
As for paying jurors more, I agree. The pittance they receive is far too low.
Matt: Then how do you explain the 80% failure rate of filed medmal claims for decade after decade, if there is no a lawsuit lotto going on?
The same way he explains how a >80% criminal conviction rate doesn’t mean everyone accused of a crime is actually guilty.
Max: You are not even a little embarrased.
Compared to medmal, criminal prosecution involves, young age of the lawyer, inexperience, low pay, big case load, with a beyond a reasonable doubt burden, for each element, with proof of intent for each element. Yet they win 80% of cases. That sets the standard of due care to bring only strong cases.
The weak case rate in medmal is not just a disgrace it is an intentional tort by the class of plaintiff lawyers.
I don’t know of any plaintiff’s lawyers with an 80% loss rate in malpractice cases. Anyone who has that rate quickly realizes they’re losing money and moves on to other areas.
So, no, not embarrassed by your fictional numbers. Not sure what relevance they’d have anyway — if your “80%” number was right, it’d be an argument in favor of contingent fees of well over 50% of the recovery. It wouldn’t mean much about a “lotto.”
The insurance company statistics in your state, go to p. 9 for the 81% claims closed with no payment:
http://www.pmslic.com/assets/downloads/pmslic_annual_report_2008.pdf
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court statistics on verdicts in medmal. Defense verdicts? 81.4. Those in that judicial hellhole, Philadelphia? 67.7%
http://www.aopc.org/NR/rdonlyres/4CA576C5-8401-4446-A6B5-22BB212E76B2/0/JuryVerdicts2008.pdf
I don’t think you understand what those numbers mean.
If 81% of trials result in defense verdicts, and 81% of claims are resolved without payment, then precisely 0% of cases are settled before trial.
I think you’ll agree with me that’s not the case.
The part you’re missing is how “claim” is defined in the context of third-party insurance. Every time a doctor says someone threatened to sue them, every time a doctor believes they committed malpractice, every time there is any communication with the insurer at all about potential liability, there’s a “claim.” Moreover, every single defendant in a lawsuit has a “claim” opened against them. If a plaintiff later recovers against some, but not all, of the parties, the parties dismissed are listed as “claim with no payment,” even though the plaintiff “won” the case overall.
Your “80%” claims number thus means a lot less than you think it does.
Similarly, the success rate at trial means little, since it’s more a factor of how the insurance company views the case than the merits of cases overall. The insurers generally settle strong cases and makes weaker cases go to trial, hence a bias in the sample of cases going to trial for weaker ones.
I, like most plaintiff’s attorneys, reject more than 90% of the cases that come my way. I then win or settle far more than 20% of the ones I do take.
Doesn’t your tortured logic also apply to the criminal prosecution, where 97% of cases are plea bargained, again, a far higher fraction than any you can come up with? That means, that in 97% of criminal cases, the defendant has chosen to accept a plea. That means the standard of professional practice is even stronger than at trial compared to that in medmal.
Again, I am comparing your track record to that of the standard set by the criminal prosecutor, despite all the disadvantages of that law practice.
Why don’t you try to meet the standard set by 25 year olds, just out of law school, paid $80K, instead of $800K, with a load of 200 cases, not 20?
The answer? The judge is paid off by both medmal bars to churn litigation, profiting both sides at the expense of the doctor. In the criminal law, there is no money to be made from the lawsuit lotto. So, there is no lawsuit lotto.
“Yes or no” questions can also be answered by stating “not necessarily” “sometimes” or “it depends.”
That really flusters the a-hole attorneys.
It also is likely to make you look evasive for not answering a straightforward question. Assuming it’s a good question, that is.
Just because you would like us to answer “yes or no” to make the issue appear to be straightforward does not mean that we have to appease you.
But I would agree that overuse of that tactic can make one appear evasive. You have to choose your battles.
Did Vinny ever give you a reason for not running your questionning in court?
yes, i’m very curious about this. i’d be peeved.
imagine you are a p0rn star, and you’re ready to jump on the set and do your thing – then BAM! a different actor walks out. that is what this reminded me of.
Chuckle. Talk about comparing a trial to a show.
That astonished me, too. I suppose there might be some tactical reason why the lead trial attorney wouldn’t do the direct exam of his own client, but not to warn you beforehand? That’s just wrong. Plus, Louise was handling her own tension so poorly, there was a good chance she’d make you more uncertain and jumpy than you already were.
As a forensic expert, I do get asked the unanswerable yes/no questions a lot. I usually say something like “I cannot truthfully answer that without explanation.” In my experience, the judge says something like “move ON counselor” or “Let him finish.”
Of course, I’m an expert, not a fact witness. And forensic medical testimony is complex, usually the lawyer (mostly the defense, but sometimes the prosecution, is trying to oversimplify a complex issue.
Interestingly enough, there is a program, funded by the DOJ to give extra scientific training to judges in cases where there are lots of scientific concepts. I forget the name, but these judges with special training may go on an exchange basis to other jursidictions. For example, a trained Ohio judge from Lake County can switch with a judge from, say, Detroit MI, and the MI judge will take over the Ohio judges’ docket for the duration.
Supposedly, and I don’t have any idea HOW they’d do it, some Canadian provincial jurists will also get involved.
hey wc sorry this is off topic but if you haven’t seen it you’ve got to check it out.. a followup to that wedding video you posted
“You thought that you could just ignore the patient when he was out of the emergency department getting tests done, didn’t you? He wasn’t your responsibility then, was he?”
Good grief. That is scraping the barrel for things to say.
I blame the plaintiff expert for not educating the lawyer about the proper questions. A list of questions by the expert has often totally tilted the outcome in favor of the side of the expert. The lawyer knows less about medicine than the doctor knows about the law. Only the expert can provide the questions that will make a difference.
Hurry up to part 19!!!!