Lying in Court and Greed Don't Pay!
The always entertaining Maxwell Kennerly has a post describing the results in two recent cases.In one, the jury clearly thought that the defendant was lying. In the second, the overreaching demand of the lawyer probably cost the plaintiff a lot of money.
Lawyers are charged with the duty to diligently pursue the interest of their clients. One thing a lawyer should never do is allow a client to lie. This is harder than you might think, since some clients have a tendency to shade the truth from the lawyer. In fact, they almost always bend the truth. Usually the lawyer will be able to work with the client and determine what really happened.
Many years ago I had a case where the client had a very consistent and compelling story about a business deal gone bad. The facts were fairly straight forward - I thought. When the trial started the client, to my surprise, testified to a completely different story. After a year and a half of one story - supported by other evidence - he completely changed his story when testifying at trial. Had he not changed his story I would never have known that his original tale was less than truthful.
Clients need to understand that not everything they did, or said, or wrote, will help their case. This is almost universally the case in any business litigation. Every case has problems. The challenge is to use the weak points in every case to show that your client is telling the truth - and should be believed.
Another problem for the lawyer is what to do with the client that has unrealistic expectations. The Plaintiff client believes (or hopes) that they are entitled to damages that are completely unsupported by the evidence. Arguing for excessive damages can have a real negative impact on the judge or jury listening to the case. Greed does not pay! Especially when the judge or jury perceives that the demand is not reasonably related to the actions.
The problem is that once in a while a jury awards a party clearly excessive damages. The award then becomes well publicized. (i.e. the McDonald coffee case.) These rare cases can change the expectations of a client. I recently tried a case - representing the defendant - where the plaintiff's claims were very questionable. The Plaintiff's counsel told me he wanted to throw the dice and try the case. His facts were weak, but the chance of succeeding was driving the plaintiff to try a case that otherwise would have settled.
Great Article!! Just wondering if we could post this on our blog, with a link back to your site!
I think anyone who's tried even a single case has had this shocking experience. It happened in my first ("second chair") trial (before I was admitted to the Bar). Our warm and lovely 70-year old client, debilitated from exposure to lead paint, unemployed and suffering, was clearly having a favorable impact on the jury when I received a call from the office about a trial subpoena that had been served on the Sutter Nursing Home. So I picked up the phone and asked why they'd been called to trial and what they would testify to. "Oh," answered the home director, "we've just been asked to confirm that Mr. X has been working for us doing odd jobs for the past three years." Whaaaaaaaaaaa?????? My client had just that morning testified in court that he'd had NO WORK WHATSOEVER in the past five years. Were it 2009 instead of 1979 when we prepared this case for trial, you can bet that I would have "googled" my own client. Nor a sure-fire way of learning the bad news clients invariably hide or "shade" or deny, but a far better chance of rooting out deception before trial than the admonitions we'd already given our client about the importance of telling us EVERYTHING -- the good, the bad and the ugly! Forewarned is forearmed. Thanks for raising this important topic, particularly for litigators who have not had the benefit of actually TRYING cases before.