Jonathan Leach
speaker
38 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Jonathan Leach’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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My name is Jonathan Leach. I am a sole proprietor trial consultant, sometimes known as a jury consultant. I am also a Texas attorney, and I have been in the trial consulting business for about 25 years, going back to the late 1990s.
So that encompasses jury research, possibly mock trials or focus groups.
to help understand how the case plays to folks in a particular jurisdiction, whatever part of the country the court actually is seated in, and then working with witnesses to help them prepare for trial, help them figure out how to communicate effectively with the jury, establish rapport, get their message across, speak at a jury level.
It encompasses things like visuals, demonstrative aids, graphics to communicate the case to the jury, that way. So a lot of different tools come into play, but the gist is to help a jury understand as efficiently as possible what happened.
I think what we see in the courtroom is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the amount of effort that the two trial teams are having to put in. It is typical to leave the courtroom at 5, 5.30 to go immediately to the trial preparation room, sometimes called the war room. And in some sense, the workday begins at, say, 6 p.m. and goes into the wee hours.
And you're always responding to curveballs, to sudden developments that took place that day in the courtroom.
I think really one of the first things I'm concerned about in this case is the length of the trial and the complexity of the issues. Jury selection is a misnomer because when you come into the courtroom as a litigant, what you're really doing is engaging in a process of deselecting jurors that you don't want.
But having said that, you would want to develop a profile of jurors you think will be most amenable to your side of the case. Always keeping an eye out for those who are potentially dangerous to your case. I think if you're working with a defense in this case, what you're looking for is a person who will take to heart the instruction to wait for the entire story.
As we know, plaintiff gets to go first. Plaintiff will do its very best during its case in chief to put over the most aggressively pro-plaintiff version of the story that it can't. And of course, you want jurors at that point still to be willing to hear from the other side, not to be so emotionally inflamed that they can't calm down and listen to the other version of the case.
if you're the defense, again, you're looking for markers of the ability to delay gratification. And I think in this case, that means just as examples, maybe folks with advanced degrees, people who have pursued an educational path maybe longer than others, people who appear to be in good health, who will give answers on the questionnaires that suggest that they are
capable of listening calmly and patiently to the entire case and sort of navigating through some of these. I saw this medical testimony is very complex. Some of the legal issues, the orders that have come down are hard to navigate.
In a sense, what's happening, one version of this case is that Miata Kowalski is being put on trial. And so as a plaintiff attorney, I'm looking for folks who will identify, I think, with Beata's plight, who will emotionally, psychologically put themselves in her position and view the whole narrative through Beata's eyes.
Perhaps someone who is more prone to think maybe emotionally rather than being coldly rational about things, looking to deselect the folks that I think are favorable to the defense. So the The higher level education folks, the folks who have been established in the same career for a long time, the folks whose life history suggests a lot of stability.
Those are the people that I think I want to strike as the plaintiff attorney because I'm looking for the opposite.
And that initial shelter hearing, which is in October of 2016, what I show here is that the guardian ad litem actually says, you know, we're in a tough spot here. I think he says all of us agree that she needs to be transferred to the appropriate place. We just don't know where that is. We're having a hard time figuring out where that could be. So, yeah, what comes through is this kind of –
desperation on all parties. Let's figure out what the best plan is and let's do that. Now, with respect to the specific plan to transport her to Nemours, my understanding is, I think I saw testimony on this, that there was, at least from the hospital's viewpoint, a meeting of the minds, right? We all agreed this is what should happen.
And then the very next day, the hospital discovers that no, the Kowalskis aren't part of that plan after all. We thought we had a plan yesterday and then today it's no, we're not taking her there.
I think if I'm the plaintiff's attorney, I'm feeling maybe more confident about the negligence claim. That is the negligent infliction of emotional distress claim.
than maybe the malpractice claim, just because I think when the jury sits down with the verdict form, they will not have a difficult path to navigate there from things that the hospital would have, could have, should have done in order to prevent all this. I think what we're seeing so far, at least, is a little bit of fuzziness about what exactly is the protocol.
What is the standard operating procedure? You and I can explain maybe why the 85 days elapsed or the 87 days elapsed, but it proves to me that the hospital was assertively, aggressively trying to find a plan B for this little girl. I'm thinking that NIED claim looks pretty promising maybe for the plaintiff.
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