The right to tell a tale

In today’s world of intricate, jargon-heavy litigation, it’s refreshing to come across a circuit court opinion sustaining the importance of storytelling at trial. In In re Diet Drugs Prods Liability Litigation, 369 F.3d 293 (3d Cir. 2004), the Third Circuit nicely summed up why a trial must be more than the rote presentation of evidence:

A trial is more than a matter of presenting a series of individual fact questions in arid fashion to a jury.  The jury properly weighs fact questions in the context of a coherent picture of the way the world works.  A verdict is not merely the sum of individual findings, but the assembly of those findings into that picture of the truth.  As the Supreme Court instructed in Old Chief v. United States, evidence “has force beyond any linear scheme of reasoning, and as its pieces come together a narrative gains momentum, with power not only to support conclusions but to sustain the willingness of jurors to draw the inferences, whatever they may be, necessary to reach an honest verdict.” 519 U.S. 172, (1997).  Unduly sterilizing a party’s trial presentation can unfairly hamper her ability to shape a compelling and coherent exposition of the facts.

Id. at 314.