subject: The Pity Strategy [print this page] The Pity Strategy The Pity Strategy
You can say that an average personal injury lawyer is much like a famous American comic. One of the best methods of raising money is by each one of them selling an image of his client as greatly affected and afflicted and this is what you call pushing the pity button. Considering their pity strategy, there is a darker, negative side involved and this is something illustrated by a recent heart chilling murder suicide in Alexandria, Virginia.
Taking the amount of a jury award into consideration, it can vary directly with the strength of the tug on the juror's heartstrings. Most of the time, the pity technique can go as far as to convince the injured plaintiff and his family of the hopeless future that awaits after it convinces the jurors. When it comes to this, some lawyers find it necessary to think things over.
It is a newly disabled person and his family that will think at first that their lives will no longer be meaningful. In this case, what follows are trial setups and ongoing court battles.
When it comes to social ordeals like these, they carry a special message for the trial bar an Oakland, California consultant to personal injury lawyers and lawyer mentioned. In measuring personal injury damages, the degree of affliction of the plaintiff should not be applied. Rather, they should be based upon the costs of pursuing independence and dignity as a lifelong goal. When it comes to trial lawyers, their worth is measured by how well they can dramatize his client's plight as pathetic and abhorrent but according to the consultant, most plaintiffs do not need to emphasize the degrading type of evidence that apparently was largely unavoidable in this man's suit. What a client is often told before and during the trial is to refrain from independent activities including caring for his own personal needs. In this case, it is that lack of effort that leads to money.
Instead of the twisted reasoning of the Vietnam War era which held that to be saved you need to experience destruction, the California lawyer likes this approach much better. With regard to the shift of focus from being hopeless to being independent, she thinks that this will get a positive response from the jurors. Taking the typical costs of independence into consideration, it is possible for this to include buying and maintaining various kinds of sophisticated high tech equipment that can assist in mobility and functioning.
At home or in the plaintiff's office, other possible inclusions are job training, personal attendant and homemaking services, sex and peer counseling, and substantial modifications which make use of robotics and computer technology. It is important that the inevitable social consequences of disability, discrimination and stigma, always be taken note of. In this case, these problems have been caused not by the injuries but by the old attitudes of society toward disabled persons.
This pertains to inaccessible buildings and transportation systems not to mention job and housing discrimination and social exclusion. Arguments for damages from such causes, create a realistic basis for a large reward, but without demeaning the individual. One with severe disability and the accompanying social stigma is not an easy life. Here, you can still have a useful and rewarding life. This is achievable if the disabled person is not conditioned to see himself as worthless.
