The defense frame

Yet you have some hurdles to clear in order to get jurors to view your case through that “frame.” The defense “frame,” which many jurors will naturally adopt on their own, is that lawsuits against governmental entities threaten the community by taking money away from the public coffers. This raises the prospect that taxes will have to be raised differently. The larger the verdict in your case, the larger the impact on public funds. To know about CACI negligent entrustment contact a lawyer.

So you have to go to work from the get-go to develop the theme of public safety in your case. In depositions of defense witnesses, find out about the entire scope of their responsibilities. How many miles of public roads are they responsible for? In addition to the safety issue involved in your case, what other sorts of hazards on public roads are they responsible for fixing, e.g., potholes, missing stop signs, etc.? The idea is to develop information that you can bring out in cross-examination at the trial to show that these people on the witness stand have the ability to affect public safety on a broad scale.

In the Schultz case, the defendant’s employees who were involved with the flooding problem were responsible for hundreds of miles of public roads and every conceivable maintenance and repair issue that might arise on those roads. At trial, we put up a big map, so that the jury could visualize the vast area that we were talking about. It just so happened that most of the jurors lived within that area. The main point that you’re trying to get across through the “reptile” approach is that the dangerous condition that caused your client’s crash is not an isolated incident that only impacted one person. The public entity dropped the ball and failed to protect your client, and now they won’t even acknowledge that they dropped the ball.

 That raises the specter that these people, if not set straight, will continue to make similar mistakes that will compromise the safety of all the public roads under their control. In Schultz, the defense kept trying to suggest that the flooding on the subject road was no worse than flooding problems that occurred in various other locations that the defendant had responsibility for. But that argument only seemed to underscore our point that there was a broad problem of public safety that needed to be corrected. So how does the jury correct the problem? This is where a measure of subtlety on the part of the plaintiff’s attorney is very important.

You cannot ask the jury to punish the defendant because punitive damages are not available against a governmental entity. You cannot ask the jurors to put themselves in the plaintiff’s shoes because this violates the so-called “Golden Rule.” What you should be able to do, however, is explain to the jury why it is important that they not discount their verdict on account of the fact that the defendant is a public entity. I would suggest taking on this issue head-on. In voir dire, weed out those jurors who identify with the defendant and are resistant to the idea that a public entity should be responsible for paying damages to the same extent as any other person or entity.