Film/Video Equipment Service, Inc. v. Janice Kay Baker, etc., Case No. 07CV11123: 11/18/08

This is a business damages case brought by a company against its former Vice President of Sales. Exhibits in this case are primarily made up of various email communications between Defendant and clients, vendors and other contacts of the business. Many exhibits are made up from email strings, including several different authors, recipients and dates. Before the court and jury are able to read the emails, the attorney highlights and does call-outs of portions of the emails. Moral Juries (and sometimes the court) are naturally cynical about highlights. They want to know what the exhibit contains before you tell them (through highlighting) that only portions of the exhibit are important. This helps your personal credibility and is not truly a waste of time. Use highlights and call-outs in a way that does not appear to prevent the jury and the court from understanding the context of the exhibit. You won’t look like you are trying to gloss over other information and impact your own credibility.