Bottom line: Court filings in high-profile legal disputes can cause an uproar in the Court of Public Opinion.
One of the core pieces of advice I give to attorneys and their clients when they are contemplating engaging the Court of Public Opinion, or when they’re already sucked into a high-profile case and they have to fight back, is that they need to be cognizant of how what they do in a court of law will be interpreted in the Court of Public Opinion.
Recently, a local cultural institution in the Midwest paid the price for not doing so.
There is a children’s theatre company in a large Midwestern city that’s going through a sex abuse scandal. There are currently 16 or so plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against the theatre company alleging that it was negligent in not preventing sexual abuse that happened at the theatre by instructors or other of the theatre’s representatives in the 1970s and 80s.
One plaintiff recently had a trial and was awarded $3+ million dollars by a state jury regarding her claims against a former instructor at this theatre company. The damages were levied against the instructor. The damages were not levied against the theatre company although the theatre company was found by the jury to be liable.
Soon after the trial and the verdict, the theatre’s attorneys filed a motion for attorneys’ fees against the plaintiff. The motion for fees argued that because the theatre was a prevailing party in the case — because there were no damages levied against it — the plaintiff should be liable for the theatre’s attorneys’ fees which were upwards of about $280K.
Attorneys’ fees petitions are common in a court of law but you could imagine what the public response was after this motion was filed.
Hint: it was not favorable to the theatre.
The theatre company was forced to issue a video apology in which it said it underestimated the impact of the motion and how it would be interpreted by the public. The theatre company not only apologized, it suggested that it was not going to continue pursuing this motion or file any other similar motions down the road.
The theatre company issued this public apology AFTER the plaintiff against whom the fees motion was filed called for a boycott of the theatre company. She was joined in her calling for the boycott by some of her supporters and fellow plaintiffs who filed lawsuits against the theatre.
This is a prime example of a development in a court of law having an impact in the Court of Public Opinion.
Let me be clear—I’m not here to cast any blame. I don’t know who was pressing for the motion. Nor do I know the strength of the theatre company’s legal argument.
What I do know is that after this petition was filed, the theatre company had to issue a public apology. The theatre company took a beating in the local press, which could mean it will take a beating in terms of its reputation, lost subscribers, and lost revenues.
But there’s also potential for this filing to cause serious damage to the attorney. If the attorney was the one pushing hard to file this motion, the theatre company may not be willing to refer the attorney to a prospective client. If the attorney was the driving force here, the local legal community might look differently at this attorney, too.
There are other examples of this situation occurring—where what happens in a court of law, even though it might seem pretty mundane, outrages the Court of Public Opinion.
In high-profile negligence cases, defendants will include their affirmative defenses in their Answer. Often, one of those defenses is the defense of comparative negligence. The public and the media are known to get up in arms when such a defense is made because it appears that the defendants are shifting blame in the case onto the victim.
We know as attorneys that you have to make those affirmative defenses or you might lose them. But the public doesn’t understand that. And the media doesn’t always understand that, especially when you’ve got some kind of sex abuse case or some kind of salacious case where the affirmative defenses appear to be casting blame on the alleged victim.
Each time an attorney and a client files, in a high-profile legal dispute, legal papers that most attorneys would consider to be ordinary and mundane, I recommend they take a moment to think carefully about whether any blowback from the public over these papers is possible.
Taking the worst case scenario and the viewpoint of its worst critic, is there
a possibility that a client could get hammered publicly for making the legal arguments it is making?
If so, is there a way that the attorney and client could get ahead of that possible blowback? Perhaps by having a statement ready to go that frames the situation in a way that refutes the negative public narrative around the filing?
Obviously, attorneys have to be careful not to let the tail wag the dog. They don’t want to do everything in a court of law or nothing in a court of law based on how the Court of Public Opinion might react to those actions.
But at the same time, attorneys have to be cognizant of what the Court of Public Opinion might have to say about their clients’ legal filings and legal strategies. If not, attorneys and their clients will end up like this particular theatre company in the Midwest and be the object of boycotts, of protests, and could see both the client’s reputation and the client’s business take a hit.
Bottom line: Court filings in high-profile legal disputes can cause an uproar in the Court of Public Opinion.
Wayne Pollock is the founder and managing attorney of Copo Strategies in Philadelphia, a national legal services and communications firm. Attorneys and law firms enlist Copo Strategies to engage the media and the public regarding their clients’ cases (to help resolve those cases favorably), and to engage the media, referral sources, and prospective clients regarding their firms (to help bring new client matters in the door). Contact him at waynepollock@copostrategies.com or 215–454–2180.
Copocetic 