The Plaintiff Bar’s Reptile Strategy

The reptile strategy is a based on the theory that jurors will react to the kind of fear that lights up the deep part of the brain that humans share with reptiles, and the best way the plaintiff lawyer can summon that fear is to portray the defendant as a personal threat to the community, if not to the individual juror him or herself. Attorney William A. Ruskin, writing in his firm’s Toxic Tort Litigation Blog, takes a look at the theory and considers some of the counter-theories it has engendered in the defense bar.