While we were in Costa Rica I had time to read some books. A couple of them had helpful information for trial lawyers. Here’s a passage from the book Born standing up: A comic’s Life by Steve Martin about the subject of anchoring. I’ve written about this important idea previously in this blog, but I hadn’t realized that comics use the technique to coax a laugh out of an audience.: “A skillful comedian could coax a laugh with tiny indicators…
We usually face a defense that our client, the plaintiff, was himself or herself negligent and that their own negligence was the cause of the injuries they are suing over. This is a common defense we have to deal with. I’ve collected a few arguments on that subject and here isa collection ofthem. COMPARATIVE NEGLIGENCE Ordinary care means average – a C student – not an A student. The law does not require the plaintiffto be an A student in…
John Branch wrote an article in the Times Digest about two basketball players, Eric Devendorf and Josh Heytvelt. Eric was on the Syracuse college team and Josh on Gonzaga’s team. Both were important players needed by the teams to win when each of them got into serious trouble. Eric was accused of hitting a female student in face and Josh of having a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms when involved in a traffic stop. The story was about how very differently…