Expert Witness Blog
In Jury Psychology Can Undermine Plaintiffs’ Expert Witnesses authors Neil Goldberg, John Freedenberg, Joseph Mooney, and Joseph Hanna write that cross examination of plaintiff’s expert witness should be geared to thwart the emotional hijacking of jurors that plaintiffs endeavor to secure. This strategy includes hiring a jury consultant expert witness. In this excerpt they explain the role of jurors in analyzing the credibility of expert witnesses:
Even before the Enron scandal, a survey found “that a majority of jurors are predisposed to believe an individual’s version of events in any dispute with a corporation.” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 13, 1991 at B5. After the litany of scandals that followed Enron, the problem was compounded. The Wall Street Journal verified what many trial lawyers have recognized; increasingly we are confronted with a “new class of jurors.”
The members of this class have been displaced by economic chaos – environmental disasters, and “down-sizing” – and they are now feeling insecure, vulnerable and bitter. They blame, among others, Corporate America for their plight. These individuals contribute sigificantly to the volatility of jury verdicts.
Excerpted from Jury Psychology Can Undermine Plaintiffs’ Expert Witnesses, For the Defense, December 2007.