Pioneers
For many attorneys, technology is a mixed blessing.  In this case, the attorney decided to pioneer a system in order to meet his idea of a good way to present evidence.  His efforts provided several people with their future career and influenced the way evidence is presented in courtrooms to this day.

The attorney, Richard Leighton was the attorney for the plaintiff in ALPO Petfoods, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co. Originally a jury trial, it became a bench trial that covered some 60 days over a nine month period of time.   Later, Leighton and his partner in the case, Susan Anthony, credited the courtroom system with helping to maintain continuity over the long trial time.

The Case
In 1987, ALPO brought a wrongful advertising suit against Ralston Purina.  ALPO claimed that advertisements for Ralston’s Puppy Chow falsely claimed to have a beneficial effect on a puppy hip disorder.  After reviewing the case, the attorneys, Richard Leighton and Susan Anthony, felt they faced an uphill battle showing the quantity of evidence in a clear and understandable manner.  They not only had very difficult medical and statistical evidence, but a wide variety of depositions, documents and samples of Alpo’s advertisements. 

Some of the evidence included depositions taken from ordinary consumers, often in their homes or businesses.  These depositions showed that buyers did believe that the Purina ads promised to prevent bone disease.  Leighton believed that the informality of the settings were very useful in creating believable settings for these depositions.  One even included a talkative parrot in the background.

They did not want to go to trial with boxes of evidence, stacks of courtboards and videotaped depositions that they could not access easily and quickly.  They did not want to spend court time hunting for documents or searching though videotapes.

The Solution
When asked how he decided to use an electronic exhibit, Leighton’s response was that he wanted a system that would help him show, in a seamless fashion, how interrelated his evidence was.  He had seen “…some stuff on television and in the news” about media systems being used to train airline pilots. 

He enlisted his client’s advertising agency for help.  That took him to FlightSafety, International, a company producing computer-based interactive video training programs.  Working directly with FlightSafety, they built a video laser disk system that is arguably the first used in a courtroom, and certainly the most influential.

The developers, John Moehring and Sam Ulin, were producing interactive laser disks with filmed images integrated with computer graphics of cockpits to train pilots on the equipment.  They had begun to work with faculty at FlightSafety to develop a system that would be used by the teaching staff in class.  They were intrigued by the thought of producing a system for the courtroom that would meet Leighton’s needs and would dovetail with their current work.  Taking some time off from FlightSafety, they plunged into developing a system for Leighton.

The Outcome
Leighton and Anthony’s suit for Alpo was successful.

The electronic system, while it was not without its flaws, was so helpful in presenting the evidence, that the judge, Judge Sporkin, took time to address the issue directly.  When the opposition rose to give their summation, they mentioned that they would do it without electronic aids in “the old fashioned way.”  Sporkin responded, “Don’t knock the new way.  I am telling you, it is sensational.  I must tell you, that’s – I think that’s going to be the way of the future.  It is very impressive.  But that has nothing to do with how I decide the case.” 

During trial, the judge had occasion to ask Leighton’s team to find documents on their system that the opposition could not find in their boxes of documents.  Since this was a bench trial, the judge often prodded attorneys to move on or asked questions.  Being able to find their evidence quickly was a help in presenting before this judge.

Sam Ulin and John Moehring, after trying to convince FlightSafety that there was a future in litigation systems, went to work for Don Vinson at LSI Graphic Evidence, where they developed a system that was used nationally for many years.  Currently, they jointly own IDEA, Inc., a company that continues to innovate products for the courtroom including the TrialPro Presentation System.  Their systems have been used in hundreds of trials nationally, and are used by companies such as Decision Quest and Forensic Technologies International.  Cases have run from million dollar to billion dollar suits involving literally millions of documents, thousands of exhibits and hours of video and animation.

Today, electronic systems are ubiquitous.  In addition to model courtrooms being built with installed monitors, many courthouses are being pre-wired for electronics. However, it was Richard Leighton’s vision that provided the case used to pioneer a new method of communicating effectively in a courtroom.

 "Winning Your Case with Graphics" by A. Tana Kanter. Copyright 1999 by CRC Press LLC

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