Melissa M Gomez

June 27, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

In the child sexual abuse criminal trial of Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach of the Penn State University football team, the defense made an argument that Sandusky had histrionic personality disorder.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

April 08, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

While every witness preparation session I conduct is different depending on the needs, communicative issues and messages of a particular witness, there is one thing that I do with just about every witness. I ask the following question: "If I were a juror in your case, what are the three main things I need to learn from you and your testimony." The answers are often astonishing.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

December 13, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

In my experience with injury cases, I have seen an all-too-common error of plaintiffs counsel in jury trials. The error is an over-emphasis on sympathy in an effort to accelerate damages. I remember one such example of a horrible case involving the death of a child. For the first two days of trial, plaintiffs counsel put family member after family member on the stand, talking about the horrendous accident at issue in the case and its impact on the child's family. By the end of those two days, everyone in the courtroom, especially the jurors, were emotionally drained. The problem for the plaintiff was that no one yet understood why this was the defendant's fault. Sympathy for the plaintiff was high. The verdict was for the defense.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

January 10, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

Sympathy is a central part of any injury case, but from what I have seen in jury research and in trial, the true damage accelerator for defendants is anger.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

July 26, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

In a medical negligence trial, a defendant nephrologist was accused of failing to appropriately monitor the raising of a patient's blood sodium levels, which had been depleted to a life-threatening extent by excessive alcohol consumption. The claim was that, as a result of the doctor raising sodium levels too quickly, instead of having a massive hangover, the plaintiff was left with permanent and severe neurological deficits.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

March 20, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

In my career as a jury consultant, I have been confronted repeatedly with the concept of what it means to have a fair trial. The criminal child-molestation trial of Jerry Sandusky was quite a headline-maker for 2012 and I received calls from several newspapers and news stations alike to provide commentary from a jury perspective. Each reporter was concerned with the jurors' connections to Penn State University, for whom Sandusky was the former assistant football coach. Each reporter asked about the implications of jurors' Penn State connections and, considering those connections, whether it was possible Sandusky could have a fair trial. It all got me thinking about what it means to have a "fair" trial as a general concept.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

May 14, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

As a jury consultant in the region, I received a few calls from reporters asking for commentary about the Kermit Gosnell trial and the fact that, after days upon days of seeing and hearing horrible things, the jurors seemed not to react as strongly to the evidence as they did when the trial began and graphic evidence was first introduced. One reporter wanted to know whether that meant the jurors weren't being impacted by the evidence anymore and whether the graphic nature of the testimony was, in fact, beginning to backfire on the prosecution. My answer: "The evidence is likely still quite impactful, but it very well may become impactful in a way it was not intended to be."

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

February 01, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

While presenting at a CLE seminar with a panel of litigators and judges about the psychology of jurors, I presented a piece of data I had collected over the years to the crowd. In my research, I have asked thousands of jurors to answer this question: In a trial, is it most important that the jury makes a decision that a) follows the rules set by the judge, or b) the jury believes is fair? While most of the lawyers on the panel were not surprised, some of the judges were no less than dismayed to see that 61 percent of the folks surveyed indicated it is more important that the jury makes a decision it believes fair.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

September 11, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

In a trucking accident case, there was no question about who caused the collision. A tractor-trailer changed lanes and the truck driver didn't see a passenger car in his blind spot. He hit the back corner of the car and sent it spinning into a guardrail. So, what caused the accident wasn't an issue in this case. But the damages certainly were.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read

February 05, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

It's all the rage. It is pretty darn cool and it is much less expensive than the old, archaic way of doing things. Online mock trials. The technology now even has avatars that look like jurors sitting around a discussion table talking about your case. Really, how cool is that? There are myriad new and interesting ways to get juror feedback about your case and you don't even have to leave the comforts of your office. Sorry to say, I am not yet convinced.

By Melissa M. Gomez

1 minute read