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Continued... Page 6 > Story Boards The storyboards in Zeretzke v. Intalco proved why the administrative safety regulation requiring defendant to deactivate the power line was not some pointless bureaucratic obscurity as the defendant's "Reagan-like" attacks on the OSHA regulations would have the jury believe. Rather, the storyboards showed that the construction safety requirements of the state building code were a matter of life and death. It was only when the storyboards were prepared showing how easy it would have been for defendant to turn off the power that the case settled. Storyboards also are available to corroborate the nature and extent of the plaintiff's injuries by re-enacting the power of the impact in the accident. As a threshold matter, jurors require that significant impact be shown if serious injuries are claimed. This is why insurance adjusters run out and take photographs of the cars involved in an auto accident, looking for the "crunched metal factor". If there isn't enough crunched metal on the cars to explain plaintiff's injuries, the insurance company's first line of defense is that the plaintiff must be exaggerating. This identifies a basic principle: jurors will better understand pain if you can show them how the impact occurred. If you can visually demonstrate what happened, you can communicate an experience of pain that jurors will readily understand. In Krein v. Nordstrom , the plaintiff, Melinda Krein, was waiting in her van for a tanker to turn off a highway. Without warning, a speeding vehicle struck the van from behind, forcing it into the back of the tanker. The plaintiff's seat belt broke from the impact and she sustained serious injuries to her neck and face. Several years later, when the case was ready for trial, her reconstructive work was done. Melinda Krein looked fine. To see her would not elicit the sympathetic response that would have been forthcoming in the days and weeks following the accident. So the challenge was to find a way to communicate the pain and trauma she went through. To fill this gap and allow jurors to experience the seriousness of plaintiff's injuries, storyboards were created that showed the force of the impact. Once the jurors could see what had happened to plaintiff, they had a much deeper understanding of the seriousness of the injuries. The combination of storyboards along with her words allowed jurors to experience her pain themselves. Most lawyers incorrectly believe that medical testimony alone is sufficient to give jurors an appreciation of the plaintiff's injuries. The foundation is the accident itself. The facts of the accident provide critical evidence, which is just as powerful and just as engaging as the testimony of any doctor. |
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