None of this would’ve happened if Morgan had been a pudding advocate instead. Then he’d be above reproach!
Left out a critical “not” :smack:
It would have been much better for me to wait until the trial starts. Trial threads are common on the SDMB. This trial could be epic with Walmart’s A team of lawyers and Morgan has the resources to hire good ones too. That’s assuming of course that they don’t settle out of court. Too bad Tracy didn’t reach out to John Edwards. Edwards is back practicing Personal Injury Law and he is/was one of the very best in the 80’s and 90’s.
I thought 5 months was enough time to transition into discussing the upcoming legal battles and strategies the lawyers will utilize.
I apologize for posting too soon.
What tactics were you discussing? You suggested he was faking or exaggerating his injuries to get money. That’s not lawyering; that’s fraud.
There’s a fine line between tactics and fraud. I clumsily stated what might occur. A top lawyer will emphasize the severity and permanence of the injury without crossing that line.
The lawyer’s statement outside court is what set me off in the first place. In any civil damages case there’s a burden to mitigate damages. That’s what the lawyer is addressing here. He’s talking to the Walmart Lawyers **and **the public. The pieces are on the board and we’re seeing the initial moves. We’ll be in the middlegame quite soon.
It is enough time, but the existence of a trial would not automatically render valid and reasonable your stupid, uninformed, evidence-free, ignorant, and prejudiced statements.
The outcome of the trial is unlikely to be determined primarily by the severity of Morgan’s injuries anyway, at least not in the first instance. They have to determine first who is actually responsible for his injuries, in terms of the accident itself, and then in terms of the relationship between Wal-Mart and the driver of the other vehicle. One of Morgan’s allegations is that the driver had been driving for too long when the accident occurred, and that Wal-Mart is responsible for this. Wal-Mart, in turn, is arguing that Morgan and his friends could have mitigated the harm of the accident by wearing seatbelts. All of these things will have to be considered by the jury, and will have to be taken into account in reaching any damages figure.