Miles B. Cooper

The mediator, just finished with the preliminaries, turns to the plaintiff’s lawyer. “Anything you’d like to say to the other side while we’re all here?” The plaintiff’s lawyer responds. “We’ve said pretty much everything in our brief.” He points to a brief in front of him -- on pleading paper, with some exhibits attached to the back, and it withholds...

Bridging the gap Our client and her husband were using their truck to tow an empty horse trailer. It broke down on the Bay Bridge. Her husband got out of the truck to look at the problem when a drunk and uninsured driver struck the trailer. It pinned her husband between the truck and trailer. CHP was on scene in...

My phone rang—it was Jane, a client who was severely injured in a car crash. The driver had $100,000 in coverage. Jane had $100,000 in uninsured/underinsured (UIM) coverage. She and I talked about the importance of liability insurance—to protect her should she hurt someone—and UIM policies. Too late for this incident, but a lesson I cover with anyone who sits...

“And a long-haul trucker is not going to have time to do chores around the house, correct?” The defense lawyer was cross-examining our economist about our injured client, a truck driver, and the figure calculated for household services losses. “I can only answer that with two words: Tuna fishing.” We saw the defense lawyer’s stutter-step. Whatever he was expecting, it...

The defense lawyer, calm and friendly through the trial, got to the podium after we finished closing. His turn. He set his notes down. I noticed his hands clench the podium sides, knuckles whitening. He began, angry, wandered away from the podium, and ignored his notes. For the next 15 minutes, he spoke with furious anger. We dared say his...

The defendant’s key witness, who said in a police report that our client had crossed the street during a red light, disappeared into the ether before a deposition was ever taken. Our client said green. The defendant said red. A classic red light/green light case with the added joy of a problem witness. But absent a live witness, the statement...

Today, a horseman teaches us about cross-examination. Some time ago, I took a course on communication that focused on horses. I’m not a horse person, nor do I aim to be one. So why horses, one might ask? As I learned, horses are herd animals, prone to flight when startled. They look to you as a leader and notice changes...

A friend of ours, in the not too distant past, put out a job offer. He narrowed it down to the final two, after interviews. His first pick? A young woman, we’ll call her Ms. Smith, whose legal experience put her in the lead. He then did what many people these days do. He plugged the names of the final...

Thunk! It arrived on my desk with the kind of weight that said, “I am a substantial pleading.” I looked up at my assistant, whose eyebrows and shoulders rose in a vaguely pitying, vaguely supportive way to remind me she was only the messenger. I looked down, flipped it open to the introduction and read the first sentence. Or more...