Kline & Specter uses not only innovative strategies and meticulous research in preparing for trial, it also takes advantage of the latest in technology. (See “Lawyers’ new credo: Keep it entertaining,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 26, 2004)
Among these are “Day-in-the-Life” videos which are shown to juries in some cases in which victims are deceased or severely injured.
These professionally produced videos are a powerful tool in giving juries – in a concise yet memorable fashion – a sense of victims’ lives before and after their injuries.
Kline & Specter also uses a wide range of expertly crafted charts, graphs, illustrations and Power Point demonstrations. These not only help simplify complex medical and other cases for presentation but also work to keep juries attentive and involved in a plaintiff’s case.
In some cases, especially those involving auto accidents, computer animation is used to recreate for a jury exactly how an accident occurred. Such presentations can often break the monotony a lengthy testimony and give plaintiffs a decided advantage in giving their side of an accident story.
In medical malpractice cases involving injured newborns, fetal monitoring strips are used in presentations to depict a baby’s heart rate and thus medical condition and progress before birth. In some medical malpractice cases, the firm purchases actual hospital equipment to demonstrate for jurors errors made in hospitals by medical personnel.
Click here to see Tom Kline speak about Trial Technology
In one case involving a boy left paralyzed in a car accident (see Miller), the firm also used a decidedly low-tech approach – it stored and saved the entire auto for several years for trial. The case settled in the midst of the trial shortly after the jury was brought to a garage to see the mangled vehicle.
In another case, this one involving a worker killed at an oil refinery, Kline & Specter reviewed more than 40,000 documents, took 39 depositions, and hired 14 experts, ranging from metallurgists to an astrophysicist. The case settled for $36.4 million. (See Davis/Motiva.)
Because plaintiff firms generally receive no compensation unless they win a case, many may try to cut corners in preparing a case they do not feel certain of winning. Kline & Specter believes in sparing no expense – or innovative techniques – to represent it clients.
See also:
- Tom Kline on document technology, Pa Law Weekly 9/21/10
- The Modern Trial
- Trial as Theatre
- PATLA Winning With Expert Witnesses
- Tom Kline on Trial Technology
