Your key witness is usually your client, or your client’s representative. If plaintiff, the witness is likely to complain, a litany of “He/she/they done me wrong.” Perfectly understandable, why else would your client be there in the first place! However, to juror ears, an unending stream of complaints sounds like whining, and jurors don’t like whiners.
What they like are people who, despite their misfortunes, are valiant, are giving it the best shot they can. This doesn’t mean your plaintiff client stiff-upper-lips it to where through gritted teeth/wired jaw they maintain “All is well,” but rather that you make sure, during direct, that you expose the ways in which your client is doing the very best that they can to survive/heal/improve things despite horrendous odds.
Now you have a potential winner in juror eyes, not a loser-whiner.
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