Impasse Breaking: Overwhelming Emotion

First Court has helped our clients to win some of the biggest cases in recent judicial history. 

Four years ago, our research assisted the defendants in the Aurora Theatre shooting civil case in winning a defense verdict. 

Recently, we helped the plaintiff victims of a drunk driver win a record verdict of more than $1 billion to compensate for the death of two young women and catastrophic injuries to a third. 

We have compiled and shared the key lessons from these landmark decisions for advocates on either side of a case with big verdict potential:

I have the pleasure of talking every day with litigators around the country, and working together to overcome their greatest case handling challenges. Recently, these conversations have revealed a slow, but monumental change in jury behavior in the last couple of years. Some questions I hear frequently that bring this sea change to light:

First Court recently completed jury research projects on a handful of bad faith cases, and developed some insight on how jurors understand and interpret the concept of bad faith. Since this can be a tricky topic for regular people to understand, we’ve shared a few insights on what we learned, and how to effectively communicate the important points to the laypeople in the jury box.

As innovation has transformed the world and the legal industry, little has changed in the way most mediations are conducted. As professionals, we always need to consider how improvements in technology and processes can help us win better outcomes for our stakeholders. If you can relate to the following account, you owe it to your clients and to yourself to consider your alternatives to traditional mediation.   

Consider this fact pattern and outcome from a case we recently worked on: Plaintiff rear-ends trailer pulling a large load of logs. I repeat: Plaintiff rear-ends defendant. But the jurors assign most of the blame to the defendant… who was rear-ended.

Although jurors come from all walks of life, they hold some common beliefs about what they like and dislike from attorneys in the courtroom.

Jurors are the single most important part of a trial. They decide who wins and who loses. While it is easy to focus on the arguments and the presentation of evidence - all of which are important - it is vital to remember who is actually deciding the case. Arguments do not decide cases. Evidence does not decide cases. Jurors decide cases.