✏️ Legal Pad
Wile E. Coyote, Product Liability Plaintiff
I’ve always loved movies, and I’m especially excited for Coyote vs. Acme. The premise alone is enough to raise anyone’s curiosity but especially a lawyer: Wile E. Coyote finally gets tired of being blown up, flattened, launched, crushed, and otherwise betrayed by Acme products, so he sues the company for defective design. After initially being shelved, the movie is now set for a theatrical release in August.
As a kid, the joke was simple: Coyote bad guy buys a rocket, an anvil, a catapult, or some absurd contraption, and it fails spectacularly. As a lawyer, the joke becomes something else entirely. At some point, you start wondering about warnings, foreseeable misuse, product testing, corporate knowledge, and whether Acme’s legal department was just asleep at the wheel for 70 years. It’s the living embodiment of something a friend of mine quipped years ago: “they should just take the warning labels off everything and let natural selection work its magic.” I can’t say I wholly disagree with that, but alas.
But that’s the paradox: a cartoon built on nonsense accidentally walks straight into one of the most serious areas of civil law. Product liability exists because things people make can hurt people in predictable ways. When they do, the questions are rarely simple. Was the product defectively designed? Were the warnings adequate? Was the danger foreseeable? Was this simply user-error, or was the misuse itself exactly what the company should have expected?
Wile E. Coyote may be a punchline, but he’s also every plaintiff who trusted a product to work the way it was sold. And Acme, for all its cartoon absurdity, is every company that keeps shipping the same dangerous thing while acting surprised when the same bad outcome keeps happening.
That’s why I love the premise. It takes something ridiculous from childhood and reveals that underneath the falling anvils is a real legal question: when a product fails over and over again, at what point does the joke become liability? Either way, I know where I’ll be some Friday afternoon in August.
💡 Sidebar
Trial Tip #24: Never Leave During Deliberations
I never leave the courthouse while the jury is deliberating.
There are practical reasons for this. Jurors may send out a question. The judge may want to take up a legal issue. Counsel may need to argue over whether testimony can be read back, whether an exhibit can go into the jury room, or how to respond to a note that somehow manages to be both simple and stupefying.
When the jury asks a question, you need to be there. Immediately. Not “on the way.” Not “five minutes out.” There.
But for me, there’s also a completely irrational reason: I am convinced that if I leave the courthouse grounds, I will lose.
I have no basis for this superstition, but try enough cases and you’ll notice some of your own quirks become habits and those habits become ingrained. It’s not even that I’m particularly nervous during deliberations- everything I can do has been done. The hard part is over. But leaving feels like tempting fate.
So I stay put. I pace. I call my dad. I eat a packet of saltine crackers. I usually catch up on emails and read all the news articles I’ve missed over the last several days. In the last three years, I’ve taken to looking through old pictures of my daughter. And most importantly, I wait.
Once the case is in the jury’s hands, control is gone. All you have left is an uncomfortable chair, superstition, and the hope that you did enough before the door closed. And saltines- always saltines.
⚖️ Closing Arguments
Last week, my friend Billy invited my brother and I over for a boys’ dinner. Bourbon and steak on the menu, which is really all the notice I need.
“Uncle” Billy is something like a migratory bird in a Lincoln Navigator. He winters in Florida, then makes his way back up the coast carrying all of his worldly possessions with him. He owns a handful of properties in Greenville, so the city has become a highly anticipated waystation on these trips. No matter where he goes, there is one thing that always comes with: his cast iron pan.
He has perfected the steak cooking process in that pan to a degree that borders on suspicious. And, if you know Billy, you know there’s plenty to be suspicious about. The pan is seasoned. The meat is selected carefully. The steak comes out early so it can lose the refrigerator chill. Salt goes on at the right time (usually hours before in contravention to most traditional notions). It’s a quick sear on the range, then time-out in a pre-heated oven. The sear matters. The oven matters. The salt, and timing all matter. Nothing is accidental.
And the final product looks simple and tastes fantastic.
A good deposition works the same way. The finished product should look clean and natural. Questions asked in the right order. Documents ready when needed. Themes clear but not overplayed. Pressure applied without looking desperate. A good result that feels inevitable.
It is preparation disguised as ease. Repetition disguised as instinct. Craft disguised as dinner.
That cast iron pan doesn’t produce a great steak because Billy got lucky. It produces a great steak because he has done the work enough times to know what matters and what doesn’t.
The best results rarely come from improvisation, exciting as that might be. They come from showing up prepared, trusting the process, and knowing exactly when to turn up the heat.
Court is in recess- see you next Friday.
