Opening Statement Part 2, Story.
Following the rules broken by the Defendants, is the story portion of your opening. I begin my stories with something akin to, “Now let me tell you the story of what happened in this case. “Please come back with me if you will to . . .” Then I tell the story of what happened in our case. I tell the story as if I’m there. In the present tense. Describing what you can see and hear. What you can touch. What people are saying and doing, thinking and feeling. What the Defendant’s do and do not do.
Focus your story on what’s important to your case. Like a play or a movie. Whatever that movie spends most of its time on is what that movie is about. Whatever your opening spends most of its time on is what your case is about. Focus your story and your case on the broken rules The betrayal of trust that caused their patient’s death. What the defendants did and did not do. Whether you tell a portion of your story in minutes or hours, days, or decades, depends on what’s important to your case.
Tell the story of how the rules the Defendants have broken came about and what makes them so important. What are hospitals policies and procedures? How and why are these hospital policies and procedures made? Who makes them? Who signed them? How many years they’ve been reviewed and approved again and again. How long have the textbooks they relied on been around? Why is it taught that way in medical schools? What is a peer reviewed article? How do physician’s own standards of care come about?
You want the jurors to know the importance of those policies and procedures. Doctors live by rules too. These are rules to live by. They save lives. They’re there to be followed. You want the jurors to know how important these rules are to your case. And the devastating consequences to your client and her family when those rules are broken. Tell that story too.
End your story with what happened. “At 6:07 that morning the baby’s monitor is reconnected. There is no heartbeat. The baby is dead. That baby was Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s daughter.”
Until next time,
James Hugh Potts II
We Win. Things Change.
