Consulting on Damage Awards

Abstract

Cases that come to trial in the civil litigation arena typically involve two broad decisions by jury or judge: liability or fault, and compensation for injury or loss. Our focus here is on jurors' and juries' assessments of damages to compensate injured parties for their losses, and the role that the trial consultant can play in shaping those decisions. Trial consultants can assist civil litigants on three main damages related tasks. All are relevant to the needs of both plaintiffs and defendants alike. First, they can help to estimate the value of a plaintiff's injury. Valuing the injury ordinarily employs the techniques of surveys and focus groups (see Chap. 5 by Wingrove, Korpas, & Belli). Second, consultants can help retain and prepare experts and lay witnesses for trial. In requesting damages, plaintiff's must document the nature and extent of their injuries. In cases with significant losses and injury, both sides typically call experts to support their own view of the injury's severity and how much it is worth (in cases involving less severe injuries, experts may not testify or may testify only on behalf of the plaintiff). Consultants can locate and work with these relevant experts, especially if they do not have much testifying experience. Consultants hired by plaintiffs can also prepare for trial those plaintiffs and other witnesses who will corroborate the plaintiffs' testimony. Finally, consultants can work with and advise attorneys on making effective arguments with respect to damages. Jurors receive little guidance on awarding damages by way of judicial instructions (Greene & Bornstein, 2000, 2003), and corroborating evidence, especially for noneconomic damages, is likely to be sparse. Thus, damages are an element of trial where attorney argument is likely to be especially influential (Plotkin, 2004; Spiecker & Worthington, 2003). We describe each of these tasks for the consultant in turn. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)