Thus, discovering the years of decision-making that led to the product defect that caused the injury can give you a chance at trial to minimize the impact of the
plaintiff's conduct and establish a contrast between the parties.
Having defined the relevant standard for evaluating a
plaintiff's conduct, the Court declined to conclusively decide whether Vinson had been a victim of illegal harassment.
Research on juror bias suggests there may be a correlation between authoritarianism and jurors who are likely to be highly critical of the plaintiff's conduct and hold him or her to a standard that those same authoritarians openly violate.
The locus-of-control measure can help attorneys identify jurors who may be harsh in judging the plaintiff's conduct. It is a useful area for future research, but the authors could have provided more insight into how they believe locus of control can be used during jury selection.
Moreover, mitigation of damages concerns a
plaintiff's conduct after an accident, not before.
Finally, the doctrine is operationally dangerous because it requires the court to evaluate the
plaintiff's conduct through a moral prism trained on an ever-changing social landscape and climate, resulting in the potential for selective and arbitrary application.
Citation to these authorities should prevent the submission of a contributory negligence defense in failure-to-diagnose and delayed-treatment cases aimed at the
plaintiff's conduct in producing the injury or condition for which treatment is sought.
In a best-case scenario, it might make the
plaintiff's conduct irrelevant, since the plaintiff could not have anticipated the defect that caused the crash.
In other words, jurors do not recognize their role in construing the
plaintiff's conduct. Instead, jurors assume that they are unbiased and that they perceive plaintiffs as they are.
William Quackenbush, a San Mateo attorney who represented Green, said the decision "opens the door for creative plaintiff attorneys to consider all state and federal regulations to determine whether a
plaintiff's conduct may be protected, and therefore whether the termination may support tort damages."
As will be discussed below, eliciting empathy for the plaintiff before the jury hears about the
plaintiff's conduct can have the effect of limiting the perception that the plaintiff was negligent.
