Truth vs. Judicial Process

Truth and the judicial process can often be quite incompatible, and this was certainly evident in the saga of the Woburn case. The adversarial nature of a plaintiff and a defendant, by definition, creates a climate in which each litigant's legal counsel must out-maneuver his opponent, and, often, the verdict is a result of the success of trial tactics rather than the facts of the case. Jerome Facher is an expert in this regard. Realizing that the victims will arouse great sympathy from jurors, he successfully persuades Judge Skinner to divide the trial into phases. If he can achieve victory during phase one, the jurors will never hear from the victims. He is also a masterful and experienced trial litigator who easily disrupts the flow of Schlichtmann's case through continual objections, even during the summation, and effectively discredits plaintiff experts on minor issues, thus causing...