Product manufacturer defendants frequently offer jurors company witnesses who are overly cautious scientists or uncommunicative engineers.

Conduct Before Causation: Order matters to jurors.

Particularly in cases involving products that jurors or their loved ones might use (e.g., pharmaceutical or automotive products), it helps to have attorneys who are able to connect with jurors at an emotional, not just a cognitive, level.

Manufacturer defendants often lack company witnesses who can tell the whole product safety story at trial, earning jurors’ trust by explaining to them how the company tested the product, how the company warned about the risks, how the company monitored the product on the market, and how the company reported what it knew to government regulatory agencies.

The plaintiffs in a case alleged that a chemical company—the product manufacturer—had failed to adequately warn its customers of its product’s risks. The manufacturer’s customers were huge oil companies who were obviously sophisticated and who were themselves minor manufacturers of the product at issue. They clearly didn’t need to be warned about the risks of the product.