Jake Plattenberger's opening is part of a playlist, available to CVN subscribers, highlighting a variety of successful opening statement structures. Browse our ever-growing Playlist library now.
The most powerful trial demonstratives both reinforce your case’s theme and help jurors better understand the complex facts of a case. And it’s often the critical details in how those demonstratives are designed and presented that ensure they meet both those goals. In a bellwether trial against Abbott Laboratories this year over the severe intestinal disease a child suffered after being given the company’s baby formula, Jake Plattenberger’s masterful demonstratives helped set the stage for a blockbuster verdict.
Margo Gill claims her infant daughter developed necrotizing enterocolitis, a potentially life-threatening intestinal disease, after receiving Abbott’s baby formula in a neonatal intensive care unit. Gill contends the company knew the formula could cause the condition, but failed to disclose that risk when marketing it to hospitals. Abbott contends that the infant’s condition was caused by other complications and developed before she ever received the formula.
TorHoerman Law’s Jake Plattenberger, representing Gill, structured his opening around a “follow the evidence” investigative process, with elements that included “motive/means,” “injury,” and “alibi.” This can be a particularly useful way to structure an opening because jurors are often familiar with these elements from television legal dramas and mystery novels.
But Plattenberger built on this structure by using highlighted tabs at the bottom of most of his demonstrative slides to indicate which element he was discussing.
“If you ever want to know where we’re at, you can follow along on the bottom and see kind of where we’re at in the presentation of evidence,” Plattenberger explained early in his introduction.
Indeed, these tabs, similar to what might be seen on a computer browser, not only allowed jurors to know, at a glance, the element Plattenberger was discussing, they reinforced the idea of that “investigative” theme. In a product liability case with a relatively long opening statement and potentially confusing elements, this detail was a powerful aid to keep jurors anchored throughout his opening.
Plattenberger also used a simple but effective visual aid to ensure jurors always knew exactly when he pulled from Abbott’s own language. When he quoted from documents or statements on his slides, he would include the company’s own blue-and-black logo in the corner.
“Any time you see an Abbott logo on the slide, those are Abbott documents or Abbott words,” Plattenberger explained.
With an opening that relied heavily on company documents and language, this helped jurors remember which language came from the company itself, while clearly tying Abbott directly to marketing statements central to the case.
And throughout his opening, Plattenberger’s slides focused on clear, simple imagery to support his contentions. For example, in contending that Abbott needed to be balanced in explaining the benefits and risks of the product, he showed a scale evenly balanced between “RISK” in red on one side and “BENEFIT” in green on the other.
“But what we learned is, that didn’t happen,” Plattenberger told jurors, as the scale tipped in favor of BENEFIT and a tab showing "100%" appeared. “All they did was talk benefit, benefit, benefit, and walked off with the money,” Plattenberger added, as an icon of a salesperson appeared, walking away from the BENEFIT side with a stack of cash.
Plattenberger’s clear, well-designed demonstratives were a powerful aid in helping both simplify and reinforce his contentions, and they laid the groundwork for a $495 million verdict, including $400 million in punitive damages.
That video is part of a playlist focused on winning examples of opening statements on both sides of the courtroom, now available to CVN video archive subscribers.
The playlist features video of top attorneys, such as Plattenberger, Rick Friedman, Thomas Winner, Karen Koehler, and more, highlighting how they structured the openings that set the stage for some of their biggest trial wins.
Browse the "Structuring the Opening Statement" playlist now, available to CVN Library subscribers.
It’s part of our new and ever-growing Playlist Library, a curated collection of video clips of trial techniques employed by the nation’s best attorneys. CVN Playlists features dozens of lists and hundreds of clips across all phases of trial, developed with an eye toward improving your courtroom skills. You'll learn the keys to a damages argument, effective examples of voir dire, and so much more.
Check out the Playlist Library now.
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