Turn Admitted Facts into Credibility Anchors
The most powerful evidence isn’t what your witnesses say — it’s what your opponents admit.
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The most powerful evidence isn’t what your witnesses say — it’s what your opponents admit.
In a complex partnership dispute that Rushing McCarl LLP recently won, John Rushing’s closing argument focused on the defendant’s admissions. Rushing emphasized their dispositive effect and used the defendant’s words to support key elements of our client’s claims, indirectly enhancing his credibility on disputed issues.
Throughout the plaintiff’s case-in-chief, we maintained variety and bolstered our witnesses’ credibility by playing short, professionally edited deposition video clips and reading aloud discovery responses containing damaging admissions.
We also compiled these deposition excerpts and discovery responses into composite exhibits, then urged the jury to consult them at the start of deliberations. Here’s an excerpt from John’s closing argument (lightly edited for clarity):
Request for admission responses are dispositive. They take issues off the table. These aren’t John Rushing’s interpretations that you’ve got to trust — these are sworn statements straight from the horse’s mouth, and they decide the issue. Here are the exhibits I want you to look at: 580, 581, 582, and 583. I’ll say them again just in case I spoke too fast: 580, 581, 582, and 583. These are the defendant’s admissions in this case. The court let us create a special exhibit binder so you could read them over.
This approach avoids the “he said, he said” problem. Instead of asking jurors to believe one witness over another, we anchored our case in the defendant’s admissions. It’s difficult to rebut one’s own statements, so this strategy goes a long way toward persuading a jury.
Ryan McCarl is a partner of the business litigation firm Rushing McCarl LLP and author of Elegant Legal Writing (Univ. Cal. Press 2024). For more tips about legal writing and argumentation, subscribe to the Elegant Legal Writing blog and follow Ryan on LinkedIn. McCarl’s book is available on Amazon and Audible.
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