.We continue in this artice our Previous blog and presentation on the delivery of effective Closing Arguments in jury trials.(See entry of 3/13/07). We continue as follows:
GIVE YOUR REMARKS A STRUCTURE
As discussed above, one should not rely upon the inspiration of the moment to deliver a closing argument. A winning summation is usually the result of meticulous, painstaking preparation done well in advance of the actual delivery of the remarks. In order to insure that such preparation is not wasted, obviously, it is
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We cannot tell people how many times unrepresented, injured workers sabotage their cases by failing to comply with their own obligations under the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act. At a minimum an employee who sustains an on-the-job injury must do the following:
1. Report any on-the-job injury within 30 days of the date of the injury. Although the law provides that an employee should notify the employer within 30 days, any injury should be reported immediately. If you do not report your injury immediately, you may
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Many people are unaware of what benefits are available to an injured worker in Georgia. Accordingly we thought it might be helpful to clients or potential clients to have an overview of the basic benefits.
(A) TEMPORARY TOTAL DISABILITY WEEKLY INCOME BENEFITS:
If you are injured and begin losing time from work, you are entitled to receive 2/3 of your average weekly wage up to a maximum of $450.00 per week. The first seven days of compensation are not payable until or unless you have
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For over twenty years, we have handled personal injury claims and workers compensation claims of all types. Anyone who has done the same has witnessed the perversion of our system of justice by medical doctors who are performing so called “independent medical exams” for insurance companies and their lawyers. It has always amazed us that medical doctors who spent years of hard work to be able to exercise their own independent judgment in diagnosing and treating injured or sick people are so ready, willing and
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We thought it would be interesting for our readers to understand how experienced attorneys prepare and deliver effective Closing Arguments to juries in serious injury cases. What we have decided to do is to blog about this very interesting subject in a series of brief articles over the next several days. What follows, in fact, is a portion of a presentation delivered by one of our attorneys at a continuuing legal education seminar for the Georgia Bar.
We begin as follows:
The most gifted Trial lawyers among us are highly successful orators. We use the term gifted because such innate ability is not common among all Trial lawyers. Those who can make a jury cry and stir their emotions with natural ease and innate ability are the few among us with this gift of oratory. These are the “show horses” of our profession. For the rest of us, we have to learn to be work horses in order to be successful at giving a winning summation. If we follow sound fundamentals, just like a football team, we can still deliver a winning summation even if we are not particularly gifted. The key is good, old fashioned, hard work. If one prepares properly and uses sound fundamentals, there is no reason one cannot be successful. What follows therefore are practical suggestions on how to go about giving a sound closing argument that is likely to yield a successful result.
A. PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE
It is said that when Winston Churchill had to give a fifteen minute speech, he would engage in six to eight hours of preparation beforehand. When he delivered his fifteen minute address, he did so eloquently and, it appeared to those observing, effortlessly. The truth is that it was not effortless at all, but instead the result of painstaking effort in organizing thoughts and succinctly summarizing them, well in advance of the planned delivery. Churchill prepared very hard for his so called “effortless and brilliant speech,” and thus, even though he appeared to be speaking extemporaneously, what the audience was hearing was the result of extremely hard work and intense preparation.
It is no different for the successful trial attorney. If you want to give a good closing argument, you must be extremely prepared. While this is axiomatic for those of us who have done a good deal of trial work, the point cannot be overemphasized. One should not rely upon the inspiration of the moment. There may not be any.
We have all heard that summation begins the moment you take a client’s case. This is quite true. In my personal practice, when I set up my file in any given case, I set up a “Closing Argument” section at the very beginning of the case. As I work on the case through the discovery phase, I am constantly putting written ideas into my “Closing Argument” file. If I think of something in the middle of the night or during the week, during a deposition or otherwise, I memorialize my thoughts on paper and put my thoughts into the “Closing Argument” file. I do this throughout the pendency of the case, all the way up to formal preparation of a Closing Argument Outline. If the case is not settled, by the time I get into intense trial preparation, I usually have a fairly thick file of closing argument thoughts. Thus, when I sit down to prepare an outline for my closing argument, I usually have 30 to 50 “points” of pithy statements and observations that I have been making over the many months that I have been working on the case. This gives me a headstart in determining which points of argument are the most persuasive, which I should use at the beginning of my argument, and which I might wish to save for rebuttal.
In short, I am always preparing for my summation and never wait until the last minute to do so. You should do the same.

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Recently, we successfully represented a Georgia firefighter in a workers compensation claim against the county for which he worked. The injury he sustained was a heart attack. Needless to say, the employer denied his claim and took the position that his job had nothing whatsoever to do with the injury to his heart. In researching this injury, we learned that forty percent of on-duty firefighter deaths in the last decade were due to heart attack, according to a recent U.S. Fire Administration report. This is
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There is an ever increasing problem for many Georgia workers who become injured and disabled as a result of work injuries. The problem is uninsured employers. We recently got a call about a new workers compensation claim from a worker who was seriously injured as a result of a fall. In fact, this worker had been in the trauma unit of a hospital for several months at the time of this call. He had multiple orthopedic injuries, including leg and arm fractures requiring many surgeries.
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We heard today on a radio broadcast that struck very close to home that four young men from a college in Bluffton, Ohio had been killed, in addition to a bus driver and his wife. Nine others were seriously injured when a charter bus crashed off of an exit ramp off interstate highway I-75 (inside the city limits of Atlanta) back onto the highway. The facts and circumstances surrounding this tragedy are still being investigated, however, this is an all too familiar tragedy that we
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Products liability refers to the liability of any or all parties along the chain of manufacture of any product for damage caused by that product. This includes the manufacturer of component parts, the assembling manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the retail store owner. Products containing inherent defects that cause harm to a consumer of a product or someone to whom the product was loaned, given, etc. can be subjects of product liability suits.
Depending on the jurisdiction, product liability claims can be based on negligence, strict
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Just a few weeks ago we blogged about the dangerous nature of police chase cases. See Blog entry entitled High Speed Police Chase Cases: An American Tragedy (2/15/07). Today we wake up with a headline in the Atlanta paper stating that “Two teens are dead and four others injured in a police chase case involving a juvenile that was driving a stolen vehicle.” According to the newspaper report of this incident, police in Clayton County, just outside of Atlanta, pulled over a joyriding juvenile who
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