In Trial Advocacy class, I hit home runs on the witness stand every week.

The reason I’m able to do this is that as a witnesses, I am allowed—even encouraged—to make up facts on the spot, as long as they are consistent with the witness/character I am portraying.

Last week, I played Plaintiff James Gable in a car collision case.

The fact pattern said the accident occurred at 2:20 PM and that Gable “had a meeting with a potential client scheduled for 2:00 PM.” In a deposition, Gable claimed that he had been driving the speed limit before the accident occurred, so at trial, the defense attorney’s job was to get Gable (me) to admit that I had been speeding to get to my meeting.

Here’s how it went down:

“Mr. Gable, how fast were you going when the accident occurred?”

“I never went faster than twenty-five miles per hour.”

“Were you in a rush before the accident occurred?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it true that you had a business meeting scheduled for two-o-clock?”

“Yes.”

“So you had a potential client waiting in your office for twenty minutes?”

“No.”

“But you just said you were running twenty minutes late for your two-o-clock meeting.”

“I didn’t say that; I said the meeting was scheduled for two. See, at one-o-clock, my potential client called and said he was running an hour late. So I had plenty of time to return to my office. I was in no rush at all.”

The defense attorney tried to impeach me by omission, arguing that I hadn’t mentioned my potential clients’ tardiness during my deposition, so I mustered up the most innocent look I could and I said, “You never asked.”

Then the defense attorney tried to impeach me with a statement I had made to the cops:

“Didn’t you tell Officer Johnston you were going thirty miles per hour?”

“I don’t remember that conversation.”

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, the defense attorney couldn’t admit Officer Johnston’s police report into evidence because I didn’t write it. In a real trial, the defense attorney would have called Johnston to the stand, but in class, that wasn’t an option.

If you were the defense attorney, how would you have dealt with me/Gable?

Technorati Tags: Witness, Trial, Trial Advocacy Class, Federal Rules of Evidence

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My first-cousin Steve and my ex-girlfriend Laura both live in Brooklyn and work at big Manhattan law firms. Door-to-door, their commute takes roughly one hour.

My father, who lives in a suburb of Detroit and works in a different suburb of Detroit, drives to work every morning. It takes him twenty minutes.

I’ve got them all beat. I can walk from my apartment, down Michigan Avenue, to the DePaul University College of Law in seventeen minutes flat. Only now that the weather is warming up, Chicago’s tourism is picking up, and Michigan Avenue is beginning to resemble Disney World’s Main Street USA…only with more tourists.

Here’s what the trip from my apartment to the law school looked like a few days ago:

First I walked down the front steps of my apartment.

Then I walked south on Michigan Avenue.

Then I passed by Millennium Park’s Cloud Gate sculpture.

Then I passed the Art Institute of Chicago.

And then I wound up at the school.

Technorati Tags: Commute, Michigan Avenue

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A basic rule of Product Liability is that manufacturers of hazardous products have a duty to warn customers of their products’ potential dangers. If they don’t, they can (and probably will) be sued on the grounds of Warning Defect.

In class, we’ve read warnings for boats (“WARNING! ENGINE EXAUST GAS IS DEADLY!”), floor adhesives, (“DANGER! EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE!”), and tires (“ * TIRE MAY EXPLODE WHEN REINFLATED CAUSING SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH*”).

Warnings children of products’ dangers is particularly difficult because 1) some children can’t read and 2) according to my Product Liability textbook, the Pittsburgh Poison Center of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh found that “the traditional skull and crossbones symbol…

…tended to attract rather than repel small children to hazardous substances so labeled” because “children associated the symbol with cartoon pirates, adventure, and excitement.”

In response to the above finding, researches conducted a study in which children were shown bottles of mouthwash with various pictorial labels and asked to select the bottle from which they’d least like to drink. None of the kids wanted to drink from the bottle with “Mr. Yuk’s” face on it.

This leads us to the contest…

You’ve been asked to represent the GLOBO-CHEM Corporation, which manufactures a new drain cleaner called “Extra-Strength GLOBO-CHEM Pipe Master Blaster 6000: New Formula.” GLOBO-CHEM wanted to put Mr. Yuk’s face on the bottle, but can’t afford to. In fact, GLOBO-CHEM doesn’t have the money to pay for any pictorial warning at all.

That’s where you come in: GLOBO-CHEM has asked you to create a warning for their new drain cleaner that an average seven-year-old will be able to read and understand.

WHAT DOES YOUR WARNING SAY?

(For the purpose of this contest, assume that an average seven-year-old can read and understand only one-syllable words. Further assume that an average seven-year-old will only read nine words before getting bored.)

The winner of this contest will receive a personalized congratulatory e-mail from my Product Liability professor Bruce Ottley!

The e-mail will be reprinted on LawSchoolBlogger.com the week of April 1st.

Technorati Tags: Product Liability, Warning, Lawyer

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I’m taking a class called “Complex Litigation: Advanced Civil Procedure” with Dean Greenberger, a great professor whose sense of humor is nearly as dry as the subject matter of the course he teaches.

Complex Litigation is every bit as confusing as it sounds; the class deals with large multi-party and multi-forum civil cases, and how courts and litigants deal with them.

On top of this confusion, Dean Greenberger has a penchant for using what some would consider unnecessarily ornate vernacular—a virtual cornucopia of polysyllabic confabulation.

I know he’s aware of this because he just told us that one of his Anonymous Student Evaluation forms from last year read, “Could you talk more normal? I don’t know what ‘ensue’ means. Why do you have to use that word so much?”

I laughed along with the rest of the class, but I’m still not 100% sure what “ensue” means either. On the other hand, I’d never consider faulting a professor for using a word I didn’t know; if I really wanted to know what a word meant, I’d look it up.

For the rest of lecture, Greenberger used ‘ensue’ once per minute.

Does Greenberger have to use words like “ensue” and “convalesce” “acquiescence” in every other sentence? Probably not; I’ve gotten by twenty-four years without using them at all. Still, Greenberger is a smart guy, and he’s not using big words for the sake of using big words; he’s using them to say exactly what he wants to say.

That said, many of my classmates use big words for the sake of using big words. This usually happens when they volunteer answers in class. I assume their verbage will only get worse once they get their diplomas and pass the bar; they’ll probably see their graduation and bar passage as a validation of their verbage.

But in my classmates’ defense, is there any advantage to speaking legalese for the sake of speaking legalese? For example, do clients feel they’re getting their money’s worth when their lawyer peppers her casual conversation with Latin legal phrases? Does legalese scare opposing parties into settling cases? Any advantage at all?

Technorati Tags: Legalese, Latin Legal Phrases, Legal Terms, Complex Litigation

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