There are many lessons learned from the five week trial I just finished. One of them was re-enforcement of the principle that a trial is not a battle of logic, but rather one of impression. We now know that well over 90% of our decision process is done at a level we are not even conscious about. Gladwell’s book Blink is one of the better recent books on this subject. What we know is that people’s opinion process is driven…
Last Friday, while the jury was deliberating, I was at the University of Washington Medical School giving a talk to physicians about medical malpractice. It had been scheduled for several months and so I was obligated to deliver it in spite of the stress of the day. A lawyer-nurse married to a physician talked to her husband about this idea and they both agreed it was something that should be done. I’m grateful to both of them for an opportunity…
After 5 weeks of trial and 4 days of deliberations the jury came in with a verdict for our clients of $40,100,000. The multi-million dollar verdict was not only fair but reasonable in this very important medical device malfunction case. The jury did a careful job of studying all the evidence and arriving at a just verdict.