If a trial attorney has done a good job, then the central premise of a case should be clear and simple to each juror.
It is the attorney’s job to do much more than assemble strong, compelling evidence. It is the attorney’s job to develop persuasive trial themes. It is the experienced and skillful trial attorney that takes this a step further by identifying the context in which his/her case makes sense.
Jury consultant, Harry Plotkin writes in his October Jury Tip of the Month: Those who know real estate will often tell you all that matters is “location, location, location.” In trial, the same can be said about context, context, context. No juror views a trial in a vacuum; instead, your jurors judge your case and your evidence and the litigants through the filter of their own unique point-of-view. The context in which jurors view a case matters much more than evidence, because the context influences everything.
In the back of every juror’s mind, every trial has a central premise that shapes how jurors interpret everything presented to them in trial. Usually, the central premise is an unspoken assumption that jurors create from their own pre-existing beliefs. A central premise is the instinctive assumption jurors make about what they believe motivated the litigants in the situation at hand. It is the invisible but persuasive framework through which jurors filter all of the ambiguous things they hear during trial–and which subjectively colors and re-interprets everything they hear.
The central premise in medical malpractice trials often involves the jurors’ opinion of whether or not the situation was truly an obvious emergency. Jurors who are convinced that a plaintiff’s symptoms indicated an “emergency situation” will judge the evidence and actions and inactions and potential negligence of doctors and hospitals by a much different standard than those who don’t view the obvious symptoms or red flags as obvious emergencies.
Jurors make many assumptions during trial about all kinds of things– who to trust, what really happened, how the verdict is going to impact the community–but the one assumption that will primarily influence how they view the trial is how they feel about the motives of the plaintiff and defendant.
One of the most essential goals in trial should be to establish a favorable central premise in jurors’ minds. This is done by the skillful trial lawyer who identifies the facts that best establishes what the parties were really interested in doing.
“What the jurors find important makes it relevant.”
Keep in mind that the central premise is often removed from the liability issues in a case. In a product liability trial for example, the central premise may often involve how committed to safety and testing the manufacturer was. These issues are completely separate from whether or not the product was safe, but how serious the company seemed to take safety testing tells your jurors everything they think they need to know about how likely the company would be to knowingly sell a defective product.
The jurors’ initial, default central premise will depend entirely on the pre-existing beliefs they brought into trial. But just because jurors may make some initial assumptions doesn’t mean they can’t reshape their central premise. Once jurors decide what they believe is truly going on in a case, it will color everything else said from then on.
