It's a key question plaintiff's attorneys face in every trial: when do you first give a damage number to your jury? During a webinar deep dive into a $584,000 verdict Joseph Wilson won for a Georgia woman whose arm was shattered in an armored truck crash, Nick Rowley suggested that damage request could come in the trial's earliest moments.
"What we've started doing really within the past, maybe, three [or] four years, is we put the dollar amount up right away," Rowley, of Carpenter Zuckerman Rowley and one of the nation's leading trial lawyers, said. "This is what the case is worth for changing a human being's life."
Rowley along with JL Trial Law's Wilson, recognized as one of the Southeast's brightest attorneys, dissected the verdict for a former nursing assistant, whose healthcare career was ended by the 2017 crash. Wilson's win in the damages-only trial was among the last awards handed down by a jury before covid closed courts across the state.
While Wilson put his damage request on the board later in his opening, Rowley suggested the number could be shown even earlier. And with nationally renowned trial lawyer Courtney Rowley, of Carpenter Zuckerman Rowley, joining the discussion on openings, the trio detailed how to frame a damage request from the trial's outset.
"When we pop it up, it's just the number going up on the board," Courtney Rowley said. "I don't even say the number. Sometimes... I just pop it up. That's what it's worth. Let me get into it."
"That will be a reasonable jury verdict," Nick Rowley added, as if speaking to a jury, "based on the law and the evidence...."
The discussion was part of a three-plus-hour webinar analyzing the trial and techniques to win the "tough cases," as Nick Rowley described them. They're the low-speed crash suits, the slip-and-falls, the soft-tissue injuries, the cases that many trial lawyers work at some point. And the winning tactics in those cases are the same that are often key to the blockbuster cases.
The webinar uses real trial video to discuss trial tactics and techniques, with topics ranging from delivering a "Pulp Fiction"-style opening to how to prepare your client to testify. The live event, joined by hundreds, also featured a wide-ranging Q&A.
Now CVN subscribers can watch the webinar on demand. It's fully indexed, allowing you to skip to the specific portion you'd like to see. Or, if you'd prefer, simply watch the whole webinar from beginning to end. It's part of our new Webinars on Demand, bringing discussions with the country's preeminent trial pros to you, at your convenience.
CVN Webinars on Demand | Rowley and Wilson: Real World Trials & Tactics
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