and existentially fraught weekend. Thankfully, the jury saw our client, they appreciated both his humanity and his pain, and they compensated him accordingly with their verdict. The battle rages on in post-judgment, coverage insanity La La Land, but at least there is hope… What lingers for me from that case was the story of our client, as told through his friends and family. He was a joyful person who took pride in his work. He had been working from a shockingly young age in Guatemala before coming to this country with his little sister to join their mother who had immigrated to the U.S. before them with hopes to create a better life for her children. He was a proud and capable young man who was a casualty of workplace safety lapses and corner cutting that deemed him expendable. His injury left him hurting, unable to work and anxious — he found himself in a dark place he had never before been. His girlfriend at the time of injury took the stand and explained how changed he was; she summarized it perfectly: “he was a different Edwin.” With no fanfare or flourish, her words hit like a ton of bricks. A life can be so quickly and fundamentally changed. Her words echo when I worry about ultimate outcomes and when and whether we can get our deserving client back onto the life path he once travelled. And on and on it goes, the memories of each trial or case that resolved outside of trial (as most of them do), lining up as viable most-memorable case contenders. They thrive as snippet memories of the person we were fighting for and the story of what they had been through — synecdoche for the greater complex case, which at least I don’t have the bandwidth to retain in its entirety. Jumping to the primacy effect, the memory of one of my first “bigger victories” is no less vivid than those more recent ones just described. I remember this case as a story about an older couple experiencing a second chance at love, nearly foiled by an avoidable injury, but who were determined to keep building their honeymoon oasis together despite the hardship that had befallen them. The case really had nothing to do with love sanctuaries and all that, but that was the backdrop, and a powerful background can permeate and colorize the foreground. The love they had for each other is what lingers. To me, the whole thing was a simple love story. Even today, when thinking of them, our client and his wife, I picture them poolside, surrounded by tiki torches, drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them, safe, secure and in love. I don’t expect that mirage comports perfectly with reality, but it is a pleasant, fictionalized fantasy version of the future I understood they hoped for together after having each lost their first loves/partners to cancer. At the end of that early trial, I wrote some takeaway notes at the behest of former OTLA President Greg Zeuthen about what we learned from the trial experience — we never used those notes for anything, but I do recall that succumbing to self-reflection felt both challenging and rewarding. I looked back at that writing in preparing to draft this article and was shocked that the notes impress me as a tiny bit insightful. We are often our own worst critics, but it’s both funny and illuminating to look back at our younger selves from a safe distance. For discussion, See Stories That Linger p. 44 43 Trial Lawyer | Fall 2024
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